[wordup] Microsoft, Sun, Sony and Linux

[Adam Shand]

I'm not sure I agree with the timeline but I too think Sun is in big
trouble unless they have something pretty big up their sleeves that I
haven't seen yet.  I also think Sony is about as evil as Microsoft so
I'm not sure I have a vested interest in who wins.

There are comments at the site below the article.

From: http://www.advogato.org/article/435.html

Microsoft, Sun, Sony and Linux
Posted 19 Feb 2002 by osullivj

In his book Charles Ferguson tells the story of his start up Vermeer,
how they saw the opportunity for FrontPage, and then sold the company to
Microsoft. He gives a compelling account of the Web industry in 94, 95,
96 and 97: how Netscape had a historic opportunity to displace the
Microsoft monopoly, and how MS themselves had failed to see the huge
opportunity the Internet presented and were asleep at the wheel. MS
eventually woke up, partly thanks to the braying of Netscape's
hopelessly naive management team, and marshalled all their considerable
resources to deal with the threat from Netscape. Ferguson predicts Sun
will be out of business by 2006. At first I was flabbergasted by this
conclusion, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense.

Take a look at MS's track record. Companies rise, challenge Microsoft,
lose, and retreat to their niche. IBM, Novell, Borland, Netscape... Sun
are next. Just as MS took the desktop OS market away from IBM, the file
and print server market from Novell, the dev tools market from Borland,
and the web server and browser market from Netscape, so they will take
the application server space occupied by Solaris & Java away from Sun.
Why ? Because they are the world's leading software company, and their
business is predicated on owning and leveraging de facto industry
standard products. As such they can't afford to lose the battle for
application server standards. Sun are a hardware company - they simply
won't 'bet the farm' on their software offering.

In Ferguson's book a Microsoft executive muses on Netscape's attempt to
replace the Windows PC with Navigator as the universal application
client. His observation: "they threatened the platform, they're
history". Microsoft has the smartest people, a huge cash pile, and two
entrenched monopolies, Windows and Office, which they are determined to
leverage into whatever market space attracts their attention. Sun's
Java/Solaris franchise has 'threatened the platform'. With the DOJ
settlement MS is now free to deal with Sun. They've been working on .NET
since 97, and they've already spent $2bn on it. And when Microsoft
decides they want to own a market space, they never give up. They keep
trying, and will come back a second and third time if the initial
offering doesn't cut it: think back to early versions of Windows, Excel
and IE.

So far so good... Now let's look beyond the .NET vs. J2EE battle to
other trends. Consider the following...

    * The PC market is saturated. 70% of US households and 35% of UK
households have a PC. The MS vision of 'a PC on every desktop and in
every home' has been accomplished. Everybody who is going to get a PC
has gone and got one.
    * MS is moving away from the traditional "license fees for shrink-
wrapped software" revenue model, towards software rental and charging
for web services. MS is aggressively pushing Passport and "my .net
services".
    * In the UK, Microsoft owns approx. 25% of Telewest, half of the
UK's Telewest/NTL cable TV duopoly. It is likely that NTL and Telewest
will merge, monopoly commissions permitting, to deal with their huge
debts.
    * Microsoft is launching Xbox. Superficially Xbox is a games
console. Actually it's a fully featured PC, with a hard disk, DVD ROM
and Ethernet card.

For me these trends point inescapably to one conclusion: Microsoft's
next phase of growth will be driven by Xbox users authenticated via
Passport consuming .net hosted services delivered over cable or ADSL to
their homes and being billed for those services by the cable or telco
company. Only the cable and telco companies have the billing
infrastructure and customer relationship to collect micro payments for
.net hosted services. Only by disguising the client PC as a games
console can MS get into the homes that aren't interested in computers or
the Internet per se. By encouraging as many developers as possible onto
the .net server platform it will ensure that compelling content and
services will be created, and that MS can collect revenues for the
delivery of those services. Passport will be used to match the users to
the cable company's customer records.

Sun are already history. Microsoft's real competitor is Sony. The games
console market was owned by Sega and Nintendo. Then Sony decided to
enter the market; Sega are now just a software house, having quit the
console hardware business. And Nintendo are an ever more distant second
to Sony's PS/2.

The Japanese generally, and Sony in particular, have the determination,
talent, and deep pockets to take on MS. They will not retreat to a cosy
niche at the first sign of serious opposition like Microsoft's other
challengers. MS vs. Sony is going to be a battle royal. The scale of
this contest will be similar to the Japanese assault on the American and
European auto industries.

Like the Xbox, the PS/2 is a PC in disguise. Like Xbox it is ready for
connection to broadband Internet in the home via cable or ADSL. Like
Xbox, it aims to be the home computing platform for the mass market who
aren't interested in PCs, or can't/won't pay $1000 for a computer, but
can pay $200 for a games console. However, Sony are approaching the
'computing platform for the masses' market from a different angle than
MS. Sony's vector is through high quality market leading consumer
technology hardware: TVs, DVD players, memory sticks, AIBO, Walkmans,
Discmans etc. As wireless networking with 802.11b or Bluetooth or
whatever gets built in to these devices they will become clients for the
PS/2 or Xbox domestic server platform.

Sony's consumer electronics are a very strong franchise. However, they
still stand in need of a software platform, and it can't be MS: Sony's
palmtop computers have so far run PalmOS. Naturally, Sony's main OS
platform will be Linux. Linux PS/2 is already on the market in Japan,
and Sony recently announced it will be a global product. Linux being
Open Source makes it much more adaptable for new classes of device:
witness IBM's recent Linux wrist watch technology demo. Sony is building
the alliances it needs for a software platform; at Comdex it announced
partnerships with AOL and Nokia. Of course, Linux doesn't offer a
friendly GUI like MS. But who better to engineer a consumer friendly UI
than Sony ? While Sony builds its alliances for software and telecoms (a
new area it has entered successfully with the Z range of phones), one
should keep an eye on Microsoft's ehome division, and its alignments
with organisations like Samsung.

The battle for the home digital network will drive developments in the
application server space. With IBM and Sony backing Linux, Intel's 64
bit Itanium will achieve complete dominance, and Sun's Sparc/Solaris
combination will be finally squeezed out.