Win CE's Sweep: Less Than Meets The Eye

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August 10, 1998 (9:00 AM EDT)

As consumer-electronics companies scramble to set real-time operating system (RTOS) and middleware strategies for a dizzying roster of digital products, Microsoft's Windows CE may appear to have sewn up the market, with heavyweights Sony, Matsushita, Hitachi, Philips, and, most recently, Thomson all having licensed the OS. But a closer look at some consumer companies' strategies reveals they have taken a CE license as a strategic hedge that gives them an option to tap the technology for some equipment, but does not constitute a mandate to apply it across product categories.

Indeed, consumer companies continue to hone and aggressively promote their homegrown solutions. Sony is amassing support for its internally developed Aperios and middleware technology based on the Home Audio Video interoperability specifications. Likewise, Matsushita Electric is pursing its Pie OS, and Hitachi is working on a version of iTron.

Thomson Multimedia recently signed a far-reaching agreement with Microsoft under which the consumer company will consider applying CE in its broad product line. The two companies have also agreed to work together to promote enhanced-TV products. But Thomson has not relinquished control over its electronic programming-guide technologies, and it continues to pursue a low-intensity interactive-TV concept that is not based on CE.

Just two weeks ago, Sony and Tele-Communications Inc. announced a deal that gives TCI, the largest cable-system operator in the United States, access to Sony's Home Networking Module middleware. TCI has also has also licensed Aperios for digital set-tops that do not use CE.

The agreement suggests the Japanese consumer giant may use CE only "when it's necessary -- in a situation where a service provider such as Tele-Communications Inc. specifies CE as a mandatory platform," said Yukio Kubota, deputy president of Sony's divisional Digital Network Solutions, in Tokyo. TCI's decision not to require CE bestows further legitimacy on Aperios as a viable CE alternative.

And one Japanese executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, explained Matsushita's recent move to become a CE licensee as a preemptive strike against Sony: "Matsushita wanted to prevent Sony from developing a special relationship with Microsoft."

The moves may suggest some reservations about CE among consumer companies. "Windows CE has been very much geared to the high end, not the highly embedded market," said Ran Mokady, CEO of STNC, in Bury St. Edmunds, England, a developer of small-footprint browser technology and related software components for licensing to OS developers and systems companies. "For the handheld PC and set-top box, it's attracting a lot of attention -- from those prepared to suffer the marketing and branding issues."

'Windows CE has been very much geared to the high end, not the highly embedded market. For the handheld PC and set-top box, it's attracting a lot of attention -- from those prepared to suffer the marketing and branding issues.'
-- Ran Mokady
STNC

Those issues, Mokady said, include the relatively high licensing fees for CE; the user interface, which gives equipment a PC look and feel; and the requirement that the CE logo be affixed to equipment that runs the OS.

CE's PC-like aspects are not always a negative for the consumer market. For some applications, consumer companies are licensing CE, then "bolting on" other software components, such as minimum-footprint browsers. In such cases, CE is being chosen for its file structure, its PC look and feel, and the belief that the existence of third-party software will aid sales.

In recent weeks, Philips has provided an example of the bolt-on strategy by saying it will use database forms technology from Spyglass as an add-on for its Velo handheld PCs.

Mokady considers the tendency to rework or bolt on to standard technologies a symptom of the state of the embedded market. "Standards are good to get you started, but almost as soon as they become established, companies look to differentiate," he said. "It's nice to have a standard, but it's nicer to be the only one who is better than the standard."

Consumer companies thus continue to formulate corporatewide strategies for disparate RTOSes that have been randomly adopted in different product divisions. They are also looking beyond the RTOS as they jockey to pitch proprietary middleware for consideration as a de facto standard.

"The middleware battle is likely to intensify over the next 12 months," said Masahiro Fujimoto, managing director of Victor Co. of Japan (JVC).

Hideki Gomi, a JVC managing director, said his company's first internal meeting on RTOS issues revealed JVC has been using close to 10 different RTOSes internally. JVC is using well-known third-party-developed OSes, but is also developing its own RTOS in collaboration with Taos Systems Group, in Reading, England, developer of the Elate portable operating system and virtual-machine operating environment, EE Times learned.

Francis Charig, chairman and CEO of Taos, said his company has provided Elate to a number of Japanese organizations for such applications as mobile devices, digital cameras, and video-entertainment systems.

"Companies are pursuing multiple development strategies, although not all of [those strategies] will see the light of day. OEMs [original equipment manufacturers], particularly larger OEMs, do not need to gamble on a single solution -- not when they can back all the horses," said STNC's Mokady. "The consumer-convergence market is far from stable. Experimentation is the order of the day."

As long as diversity reigns among consumer-electronics companies, CE may face an uphill climb to achieve the sort of dominance usually expected of Microsoft OSes. Success in the consumer market will require Microsoft (company profile) not only field a reliable OS, but also provide CE reference kits for the various consumer-product categories that will afford manufacturers sufficient flexibility to differentiate their boxes.

Microsoft executives said the company is more than up to the challenge. Fielding reference designs for varied equipment is "nothing especially different [from] what we've already done with our development of Windows CE-based handheld PCs or Auto PCs," said Steve Guggenheimer, group product manager for digital TV at Microsoft, in Redmond, Wash.

"We will first build an embedded tool kit for a certain product, and then we intend to receive tons of feedback from our partners" in roundtable discussions, he said. "We will then develop a reference kit both for software and hardware."

How might consumer OEMs differentiate their products from those of their competitors? "A reference kit is essentially a tool kit. It lets our hardware partners choose to implement or not implement each building block in their own products," Guggenheimer said.

It's unclear whether that level of differentiation can fully meet consumer OEMs' design goals, or whether Sony and Matsushita will be willing to cordially negotiate with Microsoft on the particulars for specific applications. Phil Holden, product manager for Microsoft's CE product group, acknowledged that the software company is "still in early days" of formulating CE partnerships with consumer companies.

No Strategy Shortage
There appear to be as many CE strategies as consumer-product categories. Matsushita has determined CE to be indispensable to participation in the U.S. cable market, largely because of TCI's decision earlier this year to adopt CE for its set-top platform -- and because Sony had beaten Matsushita to the punch.

"We added Windows CE to our [slate of available] OSes because we have to satisfy customer demand," said Reiji Sano, managing director of Matsushita R&D.

But Sano also touted Matsushita's Pie OS, saying it is "just 50 kilobytes in size but has enough capability for interactive CATV, if the upload speed is not very fast."

Yoshitomi Nagaoka, vice president of Matsushita AVC, said the company "will continue to use our homegrown operating systems for our receiver-oriented set-tops. Windows CE will be used for the network-oriented interactivity-intensive set-tops."

Hitachi, meanwhile, said it hopes to join the fray as a technology contributor in making CE hard-real-time-capable. General manager Yoshito Tsunoda at Hitachi said the nature of that involvement will depend on the outcome of negotiations with Microsoft.

Hitachi initially intends to use its own RTOS and CE in parallel, employing its own Dependable Autonomous Hard Real-time Management technology for mission-critical applications. The Darma architecture lets two operating systems run simultaneously on one microprocessor by creating two virtual machines on the processor. The OSes can communicate and exchange data. Hitachi has already implemented the technology on a PC, introduced in June, that runs Win NT in tandem with a hard-real-time OS.

Existing RTOSes satisfy requirements for mission-critical operations, but they do not cover higher-level applications, such as graphics. Hitachi said it believes CE thus has an opportunity to become the first OS to handle both types of requirements.

"We want to establish a real-time Windows CE for industrial applications first, because their need for reliability and real-time response is more immediate and demanding," said Tsunoda. Hitachi plans to form a project team soon that will gather engineers from the company's various departments. "The team will be a counterpart of the joint project with Microsoft on Windows CE," he said.

Royal Philips Electronics N.V., in Amsterdam, Netherlands, has also split its OS affections, using CE for its Velo handheld computer range but licensing the Epoc32 OS for a range of smart-phone devices.

Epoc-32 was originally developed by Psion plc (London) for use in the Psion Series 5 handheld computer and is therefore a competitor to Windows CE. But its small memory footprint, scalability and ease of customization give Epoc32 advantages in the power-stingy mobile-phone arena.

In what can be seen as a move to head off Microsoft, Psion has formed Symbian, a joint venture with digital mobile-phone makers Ericsson, Nokia, and Motorola, to take ownership of Epoc-32 and license it broadly for mobile communications.

A Scoop Of Java Stirred In
Java, with its promise of write-once, run-anywhere capability, further muddies the OS picture. Hewlett-Packard has announced it will rework the principles behind Java as an operating environment for its printers and other PC peripherals -- an environment that, in principle, should be amenable to either CE or the original Java from Sun Microsystems.

Taos Systems' Charig said the company's Elate, while configurable as a stand-alone 32-bit RTOS, is being positioned as a complement to both Java and Windows CE.

"We can provide Elate with or without Windows CE," Charig said. Similarly, though Taos has been developing virtual-machine technology since before the existence of Java, Elate is positioned as a Java run-time engine.

"People don't buy Microsoft because of the technology, [yet] Microsoft will be a market leader. The question becomes: Who will be a leader alongside them?" said Charig.