GPS: A Windows CE Wedge?
Speaking of GPS…and of Leibson’s Law…I rarely do a double-take at an interviewee’s response, I must confess, but my breakfast meeting with RMI at CES in early January was a welcome exception (I do enjoy being surprised, after all!). The company was in the midst of telling me about its blossoming success in the portable electronics space (multimedia players, etc), when I asked it what operating system the majority of its customers were running on their designs.
I expected to hear cost-effective Linux, but what I got back was not-free Windows CE. RMI explained that while my Linux guess would have been the right answer just one year before, GPS was quickly becoming a check-box feature for a diversity of mobile CE widgets, and Microsoft had garnered the lion’s share of industry partners’ (maps, applications, hardware peripherals, etc) GPS support. RMI wasn’t sure (or perhaps just played dumb, not wanting to harm its relationship with Redmond) of the root cause(s) of GPS vendors’ Windows CE nods. Off the top of my head, reasons might include:
- Technical limitations of Linux (doubtful)
- Business relationships that Microsoft has cultivated, which explicitly require giving Linux the cold shoulder (more likely), and
- GPS vendors’ (reminiscent of graphics vendors’) unwillingness to expose their proprietary accomplishments to open-source scrutiny, cloning and cracking (ditto)
I’m really curious to find out what’s going on here; if anyone out there has insights they’d be willing to share either privately or (preferably, so that your fellow Brainers can also benefit) publicly, I welcome your comments.
The bottom line? Sorry, Steve, it looks like you’re stuck with Microsoft. 
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