With a Bush Department of Justice and a partisan supreme court, I wouldn't be surprised to see MSFT make a bid for WIND.
I confess your observation occurred to me as well. More precisely, it occurred to me every time I watched the remarkable David Bois perform miracles winning battles, while lacking an adequate strategy to win the election war. The Justice Department’s war on Microsoft has been fought and won. Microsoft has been brought sufficiently to its knees that a new free-market administration will comfortably settle the issue on Microsoft’s terms. With PalmOS, Symbian, iTRON, embedded Linux, et al dominating the observable embedded space, I think Microsoft legally might be an acceptable acquirer.
However, by no means would Microsoft be the only, or even the most appropriate, acquirer of WIND. The new software- and service-oriented IBM provides an almost perfect umbrella for WIND’s broad reach into every crook and cranny of new-era computing. Given IBM’s deep-seated hatred and fear of Microsoft, any move by Microsoft to measure up WIND should cause IBM to internalize this obvious observation as their own. WIND is the perfect mechanism for IBM to pump life into their notion of “pervasive computing.”
I think Sony, Motorola and most significant WIND partners could live comfortably with either of these possible suitors for WIND. But not all could. I doubt that Intel would be at all pleased to see WIND fall into either IBM’s or Microsoft’s dominant hands. In defense, Intel would have to enter the fray, upping the ante for what it would take to acquire WIND. On the other hand, Cisco might be extremely wary if Intel succeeded in acquiring WIND for defensive reasons. Cisco certainly would be concerned with the possibility of an Intel/WIND combination commoditizing the network equipment space, thereby dragging Cisco into the fray. It is equally difficult to imagine Sun accepting without a fight either Microsoft or IBM acquiring WIND, since such a move effectively would separate Sun from its promising Java creation.
I suspect that so far the lack of serious overtures toward WIND reflects an acceptance of a sort of balance of power between all the main players, leading to a Détente in which all the players keep their hands off the company. Any move to alter the balance of power by a major power would lead to unpredictable consequences – all good for short term gains by WIND shareholders, but not good for the long term.
The key question is: how long can the Détente last given the now-apparent nature and importance of the post-PC era of computing? In answering this question, ask not whether acquiring WIND would enhance each suitor’s business model sufficiently to justify the steep acquisition price that would be required. Ask instead whether each potential suitor could survive an acquisition of WIND by its worst enemy.
Allen |
