Microsoft's Plan to Dominate PDAs

Microsoft has once again showed it understands what a software operating system is, and how to leverage that knowledge in the constantly changing wireless market.

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week, Microsoft chair Bill Gates introduced Windows CE .Net. The software is a variant of the Windows CE operating system and incorporates a version of Microsoft's .Net APIs and interfaces, called .Net Compact Framework. This framework software includes an array of Internet standards such as XML and Simple Object Access Protocol.

When using the framework with Microsoft's VB .Net tool set with either Visual Basic or Microsoft's new C# programming language, application developers--at least in theory--will be able to create components that will interoperate over the Internet.

The whole package is designed as a software basis for the next generation of programmable, intelligent handheld devices. To this end, Microsoft is now providing software developers with access to a vast amount of new source code, nearly 1.5 million lines of operating system code.

"This is key to our customers"--in this case, the device makers, says Keith White, a senior director in Microsoft's embedded and appliance platforms group. "Handhelds have to be connected via wireless connections, and they need to integrate with PCs, backend servers, and the Internet."

Stocking the OS

The new operating system package comes with:

• Internet Explorer 5.5 as its browser.
  
  
• The latest versions of Microsoft's multimedia software and media player.
  
  
• Instant Messenger as the client notification service.
  
  
• Passport as the client identification service.
  
  
• One of the first implementations of the 802.1x wireless security standard.
  
  
• Built-in support for Bluetooth.
  
  

Prototype products from some 15 hardware vendors were featured onstage in Gates' presentation. One was a Hitachi wireless "broadband PDA," which will carry an 11-megabits per second 802.11b wireless LAN card to let users see and hear streaming audio or video content, support voice communications, and do full-featured Web browsing. Hitachi officials see the Microsoft software as giving them a direct path into the enterprise for such new devices: The improved connectivity and security were especially important to the Hitachi engineers.

Hitachi expects to release the first CE .Net handhelds by June 2002 at the latest, first in Japan, then in the United States. Other vendors are expected to ship products about the same time. The announcement of the new software, even by Gates himself, doesn't ensure it will be successful. But CE .Net shows that Microsoft has been learning from its experiences in the handheld market during the past few years.

To make the "user experience" simple but powerful, Microsoft has been steadily moving complexity into its handheld operating systems, where it belongs. The .Net features, in theory at least, promise to simplify the work of creating and deploying wireless applications written in different languages, across a range of devices. That can happen because the complexities of middleware issues such as security, client management, software distribution, and all the rest are more and more closely integrated with the underlying operating system.

Palm: Still Planning?

By contrast, Palm Computer is lagging in almost all of these areas. At the PalmSource conference in February, the company will unveil the latest developments to its new ARM-chip-based Palm OS, a necessary step forward to support more complex operating system features. But Palm's apparently haphazard approach can be gleaned from an announcement last week by Broadcom, which develops radio transceivers for the Bluetooth SIG short-range wireless communications technology. Palm will incorporate the transceivers into future Palm handheld products. But Palm said nothing about when those products would be available, and little about their relevance to the enterprise market.

At almost the same time, Microsoft and Sierra Wireless announced a development deal to integrate Sierra's Code Division Multiple Access products with another version of Windows CE, called Pocket PC 2002. The goal: let the operating system work seamlessly with CDMA connections. Future PocketPC-based devices will, with CDMA nets, have an "always-on" functionality.

Where some companies would have given up or retreated to lick their wounds, Microsoft has been steadily learning from its mistakes, gradually expanding its handheld market share, and showing once again what makes it such a formidable competitor in operating systems.