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Microsoft Exec Pushes CE On A
Consumer Crowd
(06/04/98; 4:22 p.m. ET)
By Junko Yoshida, EE Times
Craig Mundie, senior vice president responsible for
Microsoft's Consumer Platforms Division, came to the
International Conference on Consumer Electronics
(ICCE) in Los Angeles to preach to unconverted
members of the choir.
During his keynote to a large crowd of consumer
electronics system designers and integrated-circuit
engineers, Mundie pitched Windows CE as "a lingua
franca" of connectivity, user interface, and applications
for digital consumer devices. "At Microsoft, we
understand the convergence does not take place at a
device level, but the computing technology level," he
said. "We also do understand that the PC does not
replace every TV and every phone." What Microsoft
brings to the table, especially in a digital-TV market, is
"customer choices," Mundie said, ranging from "DTV as
a smart appliance, advanced set-top, or
TV-with-entertainment PC."
Appearing at the ICCE with a mission to convince the
consumer industry Microsoft could help bridge the TV
and computing worlds, Mundie said the digital
consumer market is moving toward adoption of a
general-purpose platform. "Better devices for accessing
information, entertainment, and communication will be
enabled by software," he said. "That requires a very
sophisticated software, which is a critical component" of
new digital consumer platforms.
Software components necessary to build a spectrum of
digital consumer products for the home is
"fundamentally pretty hard stuff," Mundie said, "We'll
free you from all the software complexity, and we'll let
you focus on what your industry collectively does very
well -- building highly integrated, low-cost hardware."
Mundie cited the latest Auto PC designed by Clarion
and based on Windows CE as a good example.
Mundie referred to Microsoft's "notable failure" in its
earlier attempt to enter the consumer and embedded
market with Modular Windows or another derivative
Windows operating system in early 1990s. "We tried to
jam a shrunk version of PC interface into embedded
systems, and we failed almost immediately," he said.
"Most embedded systems could not afford to
incorporate a PC interface as a control environment,
unless they were high-end systems."
Microsoft believes it has learned its lesson. "Windows
CE is developed completely from scratch," Mundie
said. The Windows CE OS consists of "more than 120
discrete modules," from which system vendors can
select their own necessary features, he said. If
Windows CE is downloaded to a WebTV-type of
set-top box, it typically occupies a "less than
2-megabytes" footprint of the total 8 MB or 16 MB of
memory usually incorporated into such a set-top,
Mundie said.
Aside from handheld PC companions, Palm PCs, and
Auto PC, Sega's recently announced Dreamcast game
console is about the only publicly announced
entertainment product that will support Windows CE.
But WebTV set-tops, Web phones, and Web digital
versatile disc players based on the Windows CE are on
the way, Mundie said.
Asked about the uphill battle Microsoft may face in
promoting Windows CE to consumer vendors, who
have a vested interest in keeping tight control over their
software platforms, Mundie said "it's a business
decision consumer electronics companies would have to
make." As the software environment for connectivity,
user interfaces, and applications improves at high
speed, "companies must decide whether it's worth
having hundreds of their engineers spend their time to
essentially recreate what we've already developed," he
said.
"In a certain class of stand-alone consumer products,
they may decide to keep their own software," he said.
But for consumer products that require compatibility,
developers may be less resistant to embrace Windows
CE, he added. |
