>> Microsoft (MSFT) is certainly the 900lb guerrilla in the software business. Any risk to future Wind River run-time revenue from Bill Gates and company?
This question has been addressed before on this thread, but it looms as such a scary thought in many people's minds that it deserves an even more powerful response.
MSFT is economically and culturally committed to the continuance of the PC paradigm of computing, and imposes no serious threat to the 3rd wave of ubiquitous, hidden computing that is just getting underway. If MSFT wants to target the embedded market seriously, why are they attempting it with just a somewhat smaller version of ordinary Windows?
The Windows OS, be it 3.1, 95, NT or CE, is oriented toward the one-on-one interaction between the computer and the user, with as much available to both as possible so as to enhance the complicated experience. Windows CE is simply a light version of ordinary Windows, small enough to work in a powerful hand-held device, but as much like grownup-Windows 95/NT as possible - with an added emphasis on compatibility between all operating systems, continuing the PC paradigm. Consequently, the OS's are huge, inefficiently written, non-robust, non-real-time, non-scaleable (Windows CE is an entirely new OS, not a scaled Windows 95, for example), and support every form of possible human interface.
The embedded market is developing with entirely different objectives. Taken to extreme, and when coupled with ubiquitous communications, the computers implementing the embedded market seem to disappear, discernible only by their ability to do incredibly intelligent things - if you stop to think about it. The operating systems needed for this emerging market are diametrically opposed to those represented by MSFT Windows. The successful ones are modular, real-time, efficient, robust and capable of supporting virtually all popular hardware platforms. (Both types of OS's are of course modern, supporting threads, multi-processors, etc.)
Windows CE is not a threat to the embedded market. In a recent IBD interview with the CEO of Geoworks, he claimed it is not even a threat to Geos. I doubt that, but I don't think Windows CE will have much of an impact even in the NC/set-top box universe (which is firmly ensconced in the PC paradigm), and especially not in the Internet Appliance space, which will be approaching the true hidden computer paradigm.
Windows NT will be used in embedded applications due to the preponderance of libraries available to NT developers, and the ease of testing when the target is an NT. However, these applications will only succeed where target real estate is not an issue, where unit run-time production costs is not important, where robustness is secondary, and where practical real-time can be bought by upping the MIPS. These conditions will never be applicable to the commodity development of hidden computers.
WIND is the champion of ubiquitous computing, a form of computing that will ramp faster and grow to be much larger than either the mainframe (1st wave) or the PC (2nd wave) of computing. Long-term investors in WIND can be comforted by this vision; whereas investors in a monopolistically profitable MSFT should be wary. MSFT does not have the time or interest to worry now about the relatively small, emerging sector called embedded systems. It has major battles to fight, starting with the Netscape, and leading next to the Oracle/Sun/WIND NC battle royal. And this does not even consider the multimedia and internet commerce entries envisioned by the company.
Just like MSFT responds to the NC threat by proposing an oxymoron, the net PC, MSFT suggests the Windows CE will prevail in the embedded market.
As I have said before, if MSFT wants to get serious about the embedded market, it would have to acquire WIND - and then keep it separated from the PC culture mainstay of the company. As long as MSFT thinks Windows CE or NT are adequate for embedded applications, they still do not see the picture. (Actually, MSFT has under development more traditional RTOS's, but they never get to see the light day for cultural reasons.)
Allen, |
