Here's a nice market summary on WindowsCE from Client Server
News:
CE Goldmine
Here's a tasty little bit of math to chew on. Microsoft
figures WinCE, including the real-time extensions it's working
on, will only be able to address about 80% of the embedded
market. In the same breath it figures there are 7 billion -
that's billion - embedded CPUs already in use. Now let's say
Windows CE is so unpopular that it only grabs 10% market share
(Sun should only wish), and figure that Microsoft grosses only
$5 per copy of CE (it's hoping for $10). That's $2.3 billion
in the bank, and that's a worst-case scenario. Then again,
maybe Redmond will get its 10 spot, and maybe it can grab 30%
market share. That's $15.6 billion. Of course there's no way
Microsoft will win it all - a potential $56 billion at the
current rate of embedded control use, and embedded control use
is increasing exponentially year-by-year. Even Microsoft
wouldn't let itself grab all that market. Geez, the Justice
Department would probably try to nationalize the company if it
did.
Sizing Up The Situation at DevCon last week
An unexpected mob of 2,300 end users and developers showed up
for last week's WinCE developer's conference, trying to figure
out whether Microsoft's cut-down version of Windows answers
their embedded control needs. The number of attendees
contrasted sharply to the 800 who showed up last year and the
150 souls who went the year before. Most of those flocking to
the conference weren't the handheld PC crowd, but big-time
corporate embedded control types anxious to see whether
Redmond's pledges of real-time WinCe are solid or vapor. "A
lot of the Detroit guys were here, you can see their name
badges floating around," someone noted, adding "a lot of
point-of-sales companies were looking around." A key issue
facing CE is whether it can become dominant in an industry
that has so far defied dominance by any operating system. Java
of course is CE's biggest competitor. NT looks to be fading as
a contender on the embedded devices themselves, but a CE
victory bodes well for ensuring NT gets to be the operating
system on the computers that control a factory filled with CE-
controlled widgets.
Friday, April 10, 1998 4:57 AM
ClieNT Server NEWS - Apr. 13-17, 1998 Issue Number |
