IE 5.0 is not the only news today. Hermes...
Microsoft Sizes Up Small Device Market
By Neil Winton, Science and Technology Correspondent
HANOVER, Germany (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq:MSFT - news), the world's biggest software company, said Wednesday that it believes it will be successful in its pursuit of the market for hand-held computers and Internet devices.
Microsoft Europe Product Manager Greg Levin told Reuters that smaller and cheaper products using its Windows CE (compact edition) software would be successful in the market created by companies like 3Com Corp of the U.S. with its Palm Pilot and others like Psion Plc.
Levin was speaking after a press conference at which Microsoft launched an Internet-enabled telephone named ''Hermes.''
The Windows CE enabled product would be launched with versions initially produced by Franco-Canadian group Matra-Nortel, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. of Japan's Panasonic and Philips Electronics NV of the Netherlands.
Microsoft is working with other telephone companies and Internet service providers to set up more partnerships to produce Hermes products and services.
Levin said Microsoft expected to sell around 40,000 in the first year. Several hundred thousand units of the Hermes should eventually be sold annually.
Levin expected the device to be priced at between $300 and $500 and to be on the market within a year.
Companies like 3Com and Psion have set out to get an early and they hope winning start against Microsoft with palm sized computers, or small hand-held devices with keyboards like the Psion 5.
3Com has already sold more than two million Palm Pilots. According to 3Com, these new flexible and cheap devices which can be used as word processors, Internet devices and telephones, will storm the expected new mass market.
''The first 200 million computer owners used Wintel machines -- (PCs using Intel Corp (Nasdaq:INTC - news) chips and Microsoft's Windows software) the next 800 million will not,'' 3Com chief executive officer Eric Benhamou was recently quoted as saying.
Microsoft's Levin isn't fazed by this claim.
''We haven't seen any examples of where these devices replace PCs. They've gone into places which didn't have digital technology before or they have been PC companion products,'' Levin said.
''We do think that there will potentially be 800 million or a billion sales of these devices and we think that we are very well positioned to provide those because look at the installed base of Windows PCs today and its probably approaching 200 million or more.''
''That's a huge infrastructure that can be leveraged with additional nodes based on Windows CE,'' said Levin.
Many large and small companies still don't have computers, Levin said, and these smaller and cheaper devices will be in demand.
''Based on Windows CE I would say our platform has really validated this marketplace and resulted in a lot of interest from a lot of companies who want a stake in the market,'' Levin said. |
