Microsoft has studied the TV/ PC/Communications
convergence space for several (four plus?) years. The company understands
the magnitude of the issues. But, at the same time, they’re still
trying to improvise their end-to-end solution to the market. So far,
Microsoft has learned a little humility about the inadequacy of their
off-the-shelf stuff for the home, and they realize they are going to
have to engage with a lot of partners in wide range of fields. Starting
from this point, can a company that seems to be universally feared and
disliked reposition itself as the guiding light, the developer and
deliverer of standards for all the interfaces and interoperability that
everyone needs?
Interoperability/convergence is an industry problem, not
a hardware or software issue. Is Microsoft the company to be the leader,
and if not, what company is? In truth, no one wants Microsoft to be the
leader; to jam their vision and implementations down the throats of
yet another industry. Alien NIH technologies that Microsoft doesn’t
control like JAVA, QT, OGL, Dolby, I2C and MPEG, etc. will be
tolerated only until they can be squeezed out by Microsoft’s versions
of these technologies. For example, Corona squeezes out MPEG, WMA
squeezes out QuickTime, WindowsBasic squeezes out JAVA, etc. All
technologies will be assimilated and marginally reinvented by Microsoft
as it subsumes and consumes the phone network/entertainment and
automotive industries, aided and abetted by its allies from PC-land, who
in their viral-like business model have to expand and continue growing
or die. It may not be a pleasant prospect, yet there is no other company
that is willing or able to take on such a leadership position.
Can Microsoft be stopped? Should Microsoft be stopped?
No company is big enough to do anything except whine about how unfair
Microsoft is and how they are monopolistic and how they crush
competition. Only the government, an agency that makes snails and
glaciers look like a rocket sleds, can thwart the Microsoft conquest of
the home, and of the auto. But an administration fueled by political
contributions will not, without enormous outcry from consumers (i.e.,
voters), really force the diffusion of control. One has but to look at
the DTV and copy-protection silliness to judge how effective or
contemporary the government could be.
So, assuming the Microsoft juggernaut cannot be stopped
from pursuing its declared manifest destiny, all the other players like
Sony, Motorola, Samsung and others can do is to try to be included and
possibly influence the standards Microsoft will develop and impose
during the next 20 years. And, though they are hardly democratic in
their application and development, Microsoft has acknowledged that even
they are not big enough or smart enough to do all and will have to
engage partners; the master plan will be slightly diffused around the
edges, just as an occupational army that takes over an alien country
becomes integrated at its boundaries.
And there will still be small bands of rebel forces
wandering through the brave new world of Microsoft home/ auto media
control that will satisfy some users, and if they gain any success they
will be assimilated and reinvented, so there will be richness in the
world from the semi-incompatible islands of functions and
solutions.
To succeed Microsoft has to overcome the inconsistent
and unpredictable behavior of its software. Consumers, even
computer-savvy consumers, won’t be looking at a blank screen and
murmuring it worked yesterday they’ll get mad, and worse, they won’t buy.