RadioShack Picks Windows XP Embedded

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January 12, 2004 (10:05 AM EST)

PARK RIDGE, Ill. - Windows XP Embedded beat out Linux as the operating system of choice in 8,000 new point-of-sale terminals at RadioShack Corp. Another 13,000 RadioShack POS deployments are expected by year's end, Microsoft Corp. will announce today.

RadioShack engineers spent a great deal of time deciding between XP Embedded and Linux, said Ron Cook, vice president of strategy and technical operations for the Fort Worth, Texas, electronics retailer. "It came down to an issue of management software," he said, namely "the ability to deploy patches and upgrades."

Microsoft will announce its RadioShack design win as well as a major new retailing program at the National Retail Federation Convention and Exposition in New York today. The Smarter Retailing Initiative aims at improving everyday sales and operations by crafting an open-standards-based technology foundation that will include cell phones, PDAs and RF identification.

Coming on the heels of a similar business deal with J.C. Penney Co. Inc. (Plano, Texas) in 2003, the announcements are seen within the software industry as more proof of Microsoft's growing emphasis on business beyond the PC. The Redmond, Wash., company has also scored design wins with other major retailers, including Best Buy, Circuit City and OfficeMax.

"Five years ago, Microsoft would look at a company like J.C. Penney and they would see 40,000 PCs," said Greg Buzek, president of IHL Consulting Group (Franklin, Tenn.), a retail market analyst. "Today, they look at J.C. Penney and see 40,000 PCs and 45,000 point-of-sale terminals."

RadioShack said last week it is incorporating the XP Embedded OS on new hardware in 8,000 PC-based POS terminals and on existing hardware in 13,000 more systems. The terminals are essentially PCs linked to peripherals, such as cash drawers. RadioShack's system uses off-the-shelf Dell PCs with 2-GHz processors, 256 Mbytes of RAM and 20-Gbyte hard drives.

RadioShack engineers said that support and design flexibility motivated them to go with XP Embedded. "This is a foundation project," said Cook. "Now that we have XP Embedded out there, if we want to add handheld devices for running credit cards, we've got everything in place."

In a study last month by IHL Consulting/RIS News, 71 percent of North American retailers said they were considering using XP in their next systems. "The overall [POS] market is moving toward Microsoft," Buzek said. He expects 40 percent of the retailers that now use DOS-based systems to switch to Linux, ultimately giving Linux about 10 percent of the total market. But "it's not going to touch Microsoft's dominance," he said.