Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : MSFT Internet Explorer vs. NSCP Navigator -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Harvey Allen who wrote (22946)	3/10/1999 10:17:00 AM
From: Daniel Schuh	Respond to of 24154

Tuning in to the Fight of the (Next) Century nytimes.com Elsewhere on the "appliance" front, there's a better known player on the horizon. At the center would be Windows CE, a scaled-down version of the Windows desktop software that is now familiar mostly in palm-size computers, where it has been slow to win converts. It would be the foundation for tens of thousands of vibrant software applications and an intensely competitive market of hardware makers all vying to compete on price and performance. Moreover, the PC itself would control an ever-expanding world of "smart" peripherals -- TVs, audio systems, telephones, kitchen appliances and other electronic gadgets. "This isn't the post-PC era; it's the PC-plus era," said Craig Mundie, Microsoft's senior vice president for consumer strategy. "The PC may be simpler to use in the future, but it will still broker lots of home services and control other smart appliances." Sounds like IBM and SNA to me, but that's just a jaundiced personal perspective. That vision presents a potentially grim future for Sony's $38 billion consumer electronics business. As a global standard setter, Sony has enjoyed high margins and big market shares. But the "PC-ization" of consumer electronics would most likely mean a world of increasing uniformity and low margins, like those that computer makers have experienced. Sony's view of the digital future is far more decentralized. Its product designers sniff that the PC is the obsolete "mainframe" of the home. Instead, they envision homes in which dozens, even hundreds, of smart appliances are seamlessly interconnected, perhaps without a PC involved at all. "Microsoft is going to have to change their business model to be effective in the world of consumer electronics," said Mario Tokoro, the computer scientist who is president of Sony's Information Technology Laboratories and a top adviser to Idei on computing and networking issues. The system envisioned by Sony would let the consumer control a digital videocassette recorder from the television set, or vice versa -- or control them both from a cellular phone. In recent demonstrations, the company has shown an integrated audio and video system tied together by I-Link, a high-speed digital connection to the cable box. It will allow people to watch movies on demand, pause a live basketball game in mid-jump shot to go to the kitchen for a sandwich -- then watch the rest of the game on delay -- or transmit a home video to a friend on the other side of the country. Moreover, the new Playstation II, introduced last week and scheduled to arrive in the United States next year, would connect to the network, serving as a digital versatile disk, or DVD, player, and perhaps even as a cable set-top box. I wouldn't put any bets down on this one just yet. Wince hasn't exactly taken the world by storm, and it's understandable that most consumer electronics companies wouldn't want to become OEMs for Microsoft like the PC box makers. On the other hand, Sony is not exactly a force in computing, though the collective mips in all those playstations is impressive. Sidebar on the OS alternative: Sony's Bet for a New Generation nytimes.com And from today's paper, a business-oriented article: A New Sony: The Walkman Goes Digital nytimes.com Cheers, Dan.