DISCONTINUATION: Bee Mobile iPack and iPack CF39
Posted on August 19, 2025
On Aug 15, 2025 we have discontinued sales and support of two products: Bee Mobile iPack and Bee Mobile iPack CF39.
Why did we do this?
Microsoft officially ended support of MS Windows Embedded Compact 2013 operating system on Oct 10, 2023. MS Windows Embedded Compact 2013 was the last OS from the family of Microsoft OSes, which officially supported MS .NET Compact Framework v. 3.9 software platform. iPack and iPack CF39 components and controls were built atop of .NET Compact Framework v. 2.0, 3.5 and 3.9. Even though official support date ended much earlier, we continued to support iPack and iPack CF39 until now as there were still many customers performing active maintanance of their Compact Framework based applications. Provision of further support was becoming increasingly more complicated and therefore we had to eventually abandon it. What a ride it was! Thank you for being part of it. The product has been on the market for roughly 15 years!
What’s next?
Currently, we are working intensively to update Bee Mobile iDesk to support .NET Framework v. 4.8. We will roll it out latest at the end of September 2025, but hopefully sooner. Current version of iDesk supports .NET Framework versions 3.5, 4.0 and 4.5. Upgrade to v. 4.8 not only upgrades iDesk to the latest .NET Framework version, but it is also executable with Mono runtime.
Transition towards Mono
Transition towards Mono is a transition path, which we recommend you to take, if you want to continue to run and maintain your Compact Framework based applications.
Transition towards Avalonia framework
Another option would be to update your existing applications towards Avalonia framework. Avalonia framework based on .NET 8.0, .NET 9) is in a lot similar to Windows Presentation Foundation and it is cross-platform (you can run it on multitude of operating systems: desktop Windows, Linux, mac OS, iOS, Android, WebAssembly). We are currently actively developing a product: package of Avalonia framework based GUI components and controls (Bee Mobile aPack).
The upgrade path here is not as straightforward as in case of Mono. Much of the code (especially part responsible for rendering GUI) has to be re-written from scratch. On the other hand Avalonia framework is gaining a lot of momentum and popularity, as it is backed by very active development team, provides good support and it’s based on latest technologies.