Microsoft struggles for foothold in wireless market

April 6, 2000
Web posted at: 8:51 p.m. EDT (0051 GMT)

By Correspondent Rick Lockridge

LOS ANGELES (CNN) -- Microsoft founder and chief software architect Bill Gates, having captured the desktop world, has set his sights on the wireless devices and so-called "Internet appliances" that he believes will dominate the future.

"Between the better phone, small screen devices, better PC and the wireless environment, it's a whole new world of communications," Gates said at this year's Windows World conference.

Gates says he's now putting all his energy into designing new software for the post-desktop era to give increasingly mobile Internet users a common platform and a single standard.

This should sound familiar to Windows users. But there is some doubt that Gates and company can set a worldwide standard all over again.

VIDEO CNN's Rick Lockridge looks at Microsoft's plan for 'Internet appliances.' Real 28K 80K Windows Media 28K 80K     MESSAGE BOARD Microsoft

"The rules have completely changed, and it's a much more open game right now," said Tony Perkins, editor-in-chief of Red Herring, a business tech magazine.

Microsoft initially tried to own the coming age of souped-up cellphones and kitchen-counter computers with its Windows CE software, a slimmed down version of the company's flagship operating system.

But Windows Lite, as it's often called, ran into heavyweight opposition.

Witness the Palm handheld, for one. Palm software is crushing Windows CE in the mobile marketplace by a five to one margin. Several personal digital assistant hardware makers have abandoned Windows CE entirely.

"Bill Gates is already losing in a lot of these markets," Perkins said.

Competitors of Gates in this venue aren't as worried about Microsoft as their brothers in the operating system or software markets.

"Today, I think Microsoft certainly isn't the force in the Internet appliance sphere of the world that it is in the desktop world," says Ray Winninger, Internet appliance developer for 3Com.

But Gates has other irons in the fire. He's a major investor in Teledesic, the planned high-speed satellite data network, and Microsoft owns or invests in countless new Internet startups.

But if it hopes to build a new Internet empire, Microsoft must defeat a whole new set of competitors who have been energized by this week's antitrust verdict.

No one wants to go from leading man to bit player. But mired in legal troubles and surrounded by able competitors, Bill Gates may not have his name atop the marquee forever.

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