A battle is brewing over the future of digital media that could determine whether consumers are locked into formats controlled by Microsoft or have access to more open standards championed by competitors. On the one hand, Microsoft is pushing its proprietary Windows Media technologies and its pending successor, dubbed Corona. On the other, RealNetworks, a longstanding supporter of many digital media formats, is joining Apple Computer and other companies in backing open-standard MPEG-4.
Microsoft faces numerous obstacles in this format war, including major resistance among content owners and distributors--such as cable and wireless providers, which are reluctant to hand over a crucial component of their industries to a single technology provider. Movie studios, record labels and cable providers have an enormous stake in backing standards to ensure compatibility between platforms and devices as well as equitable licensing terms.
Microsoft Corp. has disclosed an ambitious new project to improve security by creating within its Windows software a virtual "vault" where customers would conduct electronic transactions and store sensitive information. The effort, called "Palladium," would require consumers to buy new computers and other devices equipped with ultra-secure computer chips from Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc., which already are involved in the project, or other companies. The project's success also depends on broad consumer adoption of such devices, since these highly secure computers could safely exchange information only among themselves.
Microsoft said the technology, which stemmed from early work by its engineers to deliver digital movies that couldn't be pirated, won't be available for at least 18 months. Company officials have told other executives in private briefings they do not expect to see mainstream products for at least five years.
Intel broke through the 2GHz barrier for notebook PCs on Monday with the launch of a new Pentium 4-M chip. The 2GHz chip, which is accompanied by a 1.9GHz Pentium 4-M and a handful of mobile Celerons, meets Intel's internal target for shipping a 2GHz mobile chip by midyear. Although the PC market overall has lurched into the doldrums again, notebooks have fared better than desktops in a variety of markets for some time. Notebook shipments are expected to grow 17 percent year over year from 2001 to 2002, said Anand Chandrasekher, vice president and general manager of Intel's Mobile Platforms Group, citing a study from Gartner. The new Pentium 4-M and Celeron chips will be offered in notebooks issued by a slew of PC makers on Monday. Starting prices for the new machines from companies such as Dell Computer and Hewlett-Packard will range from $1,299 for a 1.33GHz Celeron machine to about $2,000 for a 2GHz notebook, Intel representatives said.
Microsoft's iron grip on the Web browser market has slipped ever so slightly since the release of new products from rivals Mozilla and Netscape Communications, Web researcher OneStat.com reported Monday. For the month ended June 21, 95.3 percent of all Web surfers used various versions of Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser to access Web sites included in the survey. That's down 1.3 percent from the previous month, Amsterdam-based OneStat said. Netscape 7.0 was used by 0.3 percent of the sample. Released by AOL Time Warner division Netscape last month, it helped push the browser's overall showing to 3.4 percent, a gain of 0.6 percent. Despite the nearly imperceptible drop in IE's total market share, the pace of adoption for Microsoft's latest version of the browser, Internet Explorer 6.0, rose faster than all of its competitors combined. Since April, IE 6's global usage has increased 1.7 percent, for a total of 46.4 percent. Earlier versions of the browser, including IE 5.5, 5.0 and 4.0, make up the rest of Microsoft's overall share.
Thanks ActiveWin for the link.
The old Bill, the one we all know, thought he could do it all--and pretty much did. He built the most profitable tech company in history, almost single-handedly transforming the rarefied, clubby computer industry into a mass-market enterprise. He plotted what may prove a successful legal strategy to thwart federal trust-busters. Along the way, he wrote two bestselling books, developed into a mean bridge player and passable golfer, got married and fathered two children (with a third in the offing), took singing lessons, and after an intensive and exhaustive study of global health issues, founded and funded the world's richest charitable foundation. Let's see--are we forgetting anything? Oh, right. In 27 years he claims he has never called in sick or missed work. Not even once.
Microsoft said Monday it plans its largest sales force expansion in a decade by adding 450 positions within the next year. The software giant said the expansion of its sales force is intended to further its plan to target customers in multiple industries with a range of Microsoft products. Instead of focusing on selling individual products, such as its Windows operating system or Office business applications, Microsoft is slowly shifting to a model of selling a range of products targeted at customers in specific industries, such as financial services. On Monday, Microsoft said it is going a step further by creating 12 vertical sales organizations targeting specific customers in financial services, telecommunications, state and local governments, the federal government, education, retail, health care, automotive manufacturing, high-tech manufacturing, oil and gas, media and entertainment, and professional services.
You've heard of Trustworthy Computing, and the massive corporate remodeling going on at Microsoft where every developer, product manager, and executive assistant has been asked to rethink everything they do in the context of security. Well, that's just the tip of the iceberg. Secretly, the company has been working on a plan to rearchitect the PC from the ground up, to address the security, privacy, and intellectual property theft issues that dog the industry today. Inexplicably, the company pulled an Apple and chose to detail its plans solely to Newsweek, so we only have that one report to work from. But if Newsweek's take on the plan is correct, and consumers and businesses buy into the new devices that would result, the PC landscape will soon change forever.
Mozilla 1.0 and its Netscape 7.0 Preview Release 1 (PR1) sibling are off to a strong start, according to a recent survey by market researcher OneStat.com. The company says that the Mozilla Web browser has a global usage share of 0.4 percent after just two weeks of availability, while Netscape 7.0 PR1 has a global usage share of 0.3 percent after one month. Not surprisingly, Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) 6.0 continues to dominate the market, and IE 6 actually saw its global market usage rise 1.7 percent since April 2002. Overall, IE 6 has a global usage share of 46.4 percent, according to OneStat.com. OneStat says that all versions of the Microsoft browsers account for 95.3 percent of total worldwide market usage. However, Microsoft's total global usage share has dropped with 1.3 percent, from 96.6 percent to 95.3 percent, in the past 30 days, while the total global usage share of Netscape has increased by 0.6 percent, from 2.8 percent to 3.4 percent.
Intel Corp. on Monday will introduce faster Pentium and Celeron processors for laptop computers, including the first-ever mobile processor to run at 2 billion cycles a second. Intel, the world's largest semiconductor maker, said that the processors are already in the hands of major PC makers, and laptops using them will soon be on the market. Included in the announcement is Intel's Pentium 4 chip for laptop computers running at 2 gigahertz. Laptop computers have for the last several years been by far the fastest-growing segment of the PC market, which in the last year and a half has been marked by stagnant sales. Worldwide sales of PCs fell year-on-year in 2001 for only the second time in the industry's 22-year history.
Users of Instant Messenger can keep receiving messages, even when they are not logged on to their personal computer, as Microsoft and eight European mobile operators expanded the service to cellphones on Monday. A message sent from a PC to a user who is 'off-line' will automatically be forwarded to his mobile phone in the form of a short SMS text message. Replies from a mobile phone will land back in the Instant Messenger dialog box on the computer. Mobile phone users will be charged per message received or sent. Operators in Belgium, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Denmark, Austria, Turkey and Norway, with a combined total of 31 million customers, launched the service on Monday, in conjunction with Microsoft's internet services unit MSN. MSN Instant Messenger has 13 million users in Europe and 46 million worldwide. It competes head to head with AOL Instant Messenger whose users generate some 1.2 billion messages a day.