diff --git a/src/msw/statbmp.cpp b/src/msw/statbmp.cpp
index 38afea6f7e..277755ac34 100644
--- a/src/msw/statbmp.cpp
+++ b/src/msw/statbmp.cpp
@@ -170,6 +170,10 @@ bool wxStaticBitmap::Create(wxWindow *parent,
     // GetBestSize will work properly now, so set the best size if needed
     SetInitialSize(size);
 
+    // painting manually is reported not to work under Windows CE (see #10093),
+    // so don't do it there even if this probably means that alpha is not
+    // supported there -- but at least bitmaps without alpha appear correctly
+#ifndef __WXWINCE__
     // Windows versions before XP (and even XP if the application has no
     // manifest and so the old comctl32.dll is used) don't draw correctly the
     // images with alpha channel so we need to draw them ourselves and it's
@@ -179,6 +183,7 @@ bool wxStaticBitmap::Create(wxWindow *parent,
     {
         Connect(wxEVT_PAINT, wxPaintEventHandler(wxStaticBitmap::DoPaintManually));
     }
+#endif // !__WXWINCE__
 
     return true;
 }