MIPS Inks Deal With Microsoft
By Ed Sperling -- 2/5/2003
Electronic News
MIPS Technologies Inc. inked a deal with Microsoft Corp. today to port Windows CE to the MIPS platform, a move that both extends MIPS’ push into the mainstream of the embedded market and adds another missing piece into Microsoft’s arsenal.
Each side brings strengths to the table that the other lacks. MIPS has established a strong presence in the set-top box and video game console. Microsoft has a global reach and a stable of developers that is probably the most far-reaching on the planet.
“This is definitely a win-win arrangement,” said Tony Massimini, an analyst at Semico Research. “Microsoft wants to establish itself in the home digital environment, and where that’s going to happen is in digital TVs and set-top boxes. MIPS has taken more than half of that market. And in the video game console market, Sony is MIPS-based. Last year, even though business was bad, two areas were still growing: video game consoles and set-top-boxes.”
For MIPS, the deal comes hard on the heels of its move to add programmability into its platform. Hooking up with Microsoft can only extend its reach.
“There are a lot of growth markets in the embedded area that we can take advantage of with this,” said Kevin Meyer, VP of marketing at MIPS. “This includes everything from digital TV to voice over IP, residential gateways and automotive telematics. We’re talking about volumes in the tens of millions of units.”
Meyer said the two companies have been collaborating on CE for the past five years. So far, however, CE has failed to take off the way Microsoft had originally forecast.
Microsoft officials say, however, that much will change with the latest release.
“The design cycle in the embedded market is longer than the desktop lifecycle,” said Scott Horn, director of Microsoft’s embedded appliance and platform group. “It’s generally 18 to 24 months. We’ve only been in this market since March 1998, and our breakthrough release, 3.0, was released in March 2000.”
He said the next wave of development will be very significant. The company claims to have more than 100,000 developers on the platform as well as triple-digit growth. In addition, it has cemented a similar agreement with ARM, which will carry the company into the wireless space. |
