James,
Though I didn't find VxWorks as NCI's default OS on NCI's home page, I did see WRS listed as one of its customers.
Unlike Microsoft which has the money, man power, and ambition to dominant the set-top box market, WRS is entering this market with partners. Rather than calling CE an OS, I prefer calling it a platform. It is a complete package of OS, drivers, and applications. To most OEMs and end users, it is these applications and features that matter, not the underlying OS. This may be the largest and most important difference between CE, the platform, and VxWorks, the OS.
This is what makes partners such as NCI so important. This separation between applications and applications can be WRS' advantage. It allow WRS and its partners to be more focused on its piece of the puzzle, and hopefully resulting in a superior product in both performance and marketability.
Of course, WRS is lot more than just set-top boxes. But this battle over the set-top market shows how differently WRS and Microsoft foresee its role in the "third wave of computing", subsequently, how EOMs and software developers will view the two.
Microsoft is a great company, and CE is a very formidable and real competitor. Microsoft is pushing CE harder than ever. To a large extent I became very worried over it. After carefully evaluating Microsoft's CE strategy. I think that most likely, WRS and its partners will be able to compete against Microsoft effectively in the new world of consumer appliances.
Khan |
