As Microsoft pursues its goal of signing cross-licensing agreements with the approximately 40 global companies that hold the most technology patents, it is also entering into similar agreements with other smaller but strategic partners.
It is just more than a year since the Redmond, Wash., software company announced its plans to more widely license its intellectual property, and it's now engaged in several cross-licensing agreement discussions with software, hardware, digital media and telecommunications companies in the United States, Europe and Asia.
While the computing industry has been working to tighten up the security of its products amid increasing threats from viruses and hackers, a truly trustworthy infrastructure is still a few years off, Hewlett-Packard's security head said in an interview this week.
"The old architecture is too open for today's open world. We need the hardware, operating systems, and applications to all be tightened up and work together to give us true trustworthy computing," said Tony Redmond, vice president and chief technology officer of HP Services and the HP Security Program Office, during an interview in London Monday.
Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. said it plans to offer a video service in automobiles with Microsoft next year and expects to create several channels with children's programming.
The service is due to start in the second half of 2006, Sirius said. The company will use Microsoft's Windows Media Video 9 to deliver the programs. No agreement has been reached with carmakers, Sirius said yesterday.
Sirius and XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc., the largest pay-radio company, are vying for customers with exclusive programs and by including receivers in cars. The companies together have about 3 million customers and have never had a quarterly profit. They need at least 40 million customers to succeed, said John LaForge, who manages money at FA Asset Management.
Microsoft is gradually phasing out its Pocket PC and Smartphone brands in favor of an overarching Windows Mobile brand, a company representative said Thursday.
In the past 18 months, Microsoft has already been pushing the Windows Mobile brand more than the individual Pocket PC and Smartphone names. Over the next year or two, the product category names will be completely phased out as the technologies merge, said Scott Horn, a senior director in Microsoft's Mobile and Embedded Devices group in an interview at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
Microsoft announced a handful of new digital entertainment partnerships this week, but the software giant has yet to unveil any broad initiatives to catapult it to the center of the digital music world.
However, there are indications that the company could be pursuing a partnership with Sony to take on current digital music star Apple Computer. Apple's success with its IPod digital music player and ITunes online music store has become the envy of the industry, and Microsoft looks keen to get in on the action.
Continuing its recent spate of security moves, Microsoft on Thursday said it plans to release a virus detection and removal tool on Jan. 11. The antivirus fighter will be updated on the second Tuesday of every month as part of the company's scheduled software patching cycle.
Meanwhile, exactly three weeks after acquiring anti-spyware startup Giant Company, Redmond released the first public beta as a free Windows download through July 31.
Redmond also plans to release a virus detection and removal tool on Jan. 11, which will be updated on the second Tuesday of every month as part of the company's scheduled software patching cycle.
Microsoft has made significant inroads with the latest version of its Windows Media Center, but the entertainment-oriented software has yet to find a permanent seat in the living room.
After selling just a million copies in its first two years, the latest version--Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005--has racked up 400,000 sales since it debuted in October, Microsoft said at the CES trade show Wednesday.
Panasonic and Hewlett-Packard have agreed to support each other's favored rewritable DVD technologies in some products, they said today at the 2005 International Consumer Electronics Show here.
In accordance with the agreement, HP will build support for the DVD-RAM format into its desktop PCs, and Panasonic will add support for the DVD+R format to its DVD video recorder, said Masaru Kono, president and COO of Panasonic Consumer Electronics, the U.S. arm of the Osaka-based company also known as Matsushita Electric Industrial.
Sirius Satellite Radio will use Microsoft's Windows Media Video 9 software to help create and broadcast future video services, the companies said Wednesday.
Making the announcement in Las Vegas before this week's Consumer Electronics Show, the two companies said that Sirius will build its video applications using the Microsoft tools and work with the software maker to develop programming. Sirius' initial plans are focused on creating satellite video services that can be viewed both in homes and cars, and the company cited Windows Media's compression technology as key to its efforts.
Delivering the first keynote at the Consumer Electronics Show, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates touted a partnership with TiVo amid what was mainly a state of the union address on Microsoft's digital media strategy.
The television recording pioneer has enlisted Microsoft in its new TiVoToGo effort to offer mobile versions of TiVo-recorded programs. The service will allow owners of recent-vintage TiVo boxes to transfer programs to a Windows XP PC, from which the programs can in turn be shuttled to Microsoft-powered portable devices, such as Portable Media Center video gadgets and Smartphone mobile phones.