AT&T can only buy settops for 16M homes. 100's of millions more in the world.........................................
industrywatch.com
Meanwhile, newcomers to the emerging digital set-top box market, including Turkish TV conglomerate Vestel, are not only shunning Windows but taking on other Microsoft products. Bob Marcantonio, vice president of Levin Consulting in Beachwood, Ohio, said client Vestel is developing set-top boxes for the consumer market that will give Microsoft's WebTV a run for its money. A fast-evolving market for digital set-top boxes could easily spin out of Microsoft's control, he said, as the PC market continues to mature.
But the picture isn't all gloom for Microsoft. Just this week, it secured a place for its Windows CE operating system on the set-top boxes that result from the pending merger of [ AT&T Corp. ] and [ MediaOne Group ] .
Perhaps the largest challenge Microsoft may face in coming months and years is the entity created by the merger of Netscape and [ America Online ] , in partnership with [ Sun Microsystems ] . Reports in recent weeks have openly broached the notion of an AOL-branded set-top box that eschews Microsoft operating systems for an alternative, perhaps a Java-based or Netscape browser.
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