Currently microcontrollers are embedded within most products, typical uses are in Camera's for auto focus and display drivers, Laser printers to compute fonts and control printing. Components in the automotive trade: Anti lock brakes, suspension control, theft systems, trip computers, transmission controls and many more. Recent developments have been in the Smart card field. Credit card companies have disliked the use of magnetic strips for many years, because of the ease of copying the data on a card. Manufactures of MCU have produced the secure micro-controller which is surfaced mounted on a credit card as shown below

 The I/O requirements of such a card are not large, simply a serial link, but all storage is protected against copying. The same technology is used in the Sky satellite scrambling card. Over the many years micro controllers have developed to compact more resources onto a smaller silicon area , hence microcontrollers now contain substantial computing power i.e. Maths functions Sin , Cos etc. , high level language support  and advanced control features i.e. ADC's ,PWM's EEPROM and much more, RFID tags, Wireless etc, Biometrics cards.