Microsoft News Tracker

While Apple jousts with the French politicians over digital rights management, it’s worth considering what other tech companies are impacted. Parmy Olson at Forbes sets the stage:

Delegates to France’s Assemblee Nationale voted 286 in favor, 193 against a bill that could drive a wedge between Apple Computer’s iTunes and iPod music players in France.

Apple said non to the measure quickly and loudly. The proposed law, it said, would result in “state-sponsored piracy.”

Apple pointed to recent progress in popularizing legal downloads, a trend which could be dashed if iPod users could freely load their mini-jukeboxes with interoperable music files. “Free movies for iPods should not be far behind in what will rapidly become a state-sponsored culture of piracy,” the company warned.

The bill is now set to go before the upper house of the French parliament for final approval. If it gets put in the statute books, the law could force Apple, Sony and others to share their exclusive copy-protection technologies with rivals.

And one of the more prominent others is Microsoft:

Apple’s iTunes store currently dominates online media sales, while Microsoft has successfully sold its Windows Media format to telecommunications carriers that are hoping to sell copy-protected music, TV and videos to subscribers.

The possibility of one or two proprietary U.S. standards dominating the market is not just a concern in France, whose leaders have recently been touting “economic patriotism.”

There’s more in the article about the desire of both content providers and consumers for a “universal” copy protection standard or at least interoperable standards, but neither looks likely. Interestingly, Microsoft seems to have the best chance at providing a universal standard.

Marcus Matthias, product manager of Windows Digital Media at Microsoft, said his company was following the French debate with interest but was not preparing to adjust its policy to make Windows Media a “common denominator” for digital media, whether on a TV, mobile phone or computer.

Customers agree that, given the lack of an industrywide standard, Windows Media could well be on its way to becoming the de facto format.

“In a converged world where everything travels between PCs and phones, there isn’t any DRM other than Windows Media that’s likely to cut it,” said Dominic Strowbridge, marketing director at BT Movio, British telecommunications operator BT Group’s mobile TV service.

That’s great, but it won’t mollify the French deputies or the folks who think that the French are “saving civilization,” and I doubt that Microsoft wants to be on the hook to document more protocols for competitors.

Yesterday’s announcement by Microsoft that Vista was slipping into 2007 continues to reverberate. Here’s a selection of reactions:

Paul Thurrott has the buzz on the underlying schedule and the magnitude of the slip:

“My sources now tell me that the company plans to ship Windows Vista to manufacturing on or before October 25, 2006, approximately two months later than the previous shipment schedule. And the next major Windows Vista milestone, the Beta 2 release has been delayed from April to late May 2006.”

Microsoft’s Don Dodge reports that, “The new version of Office, Outlook and Sharepoint are still on target for later this year.” Microsoft’s Ward Ralston says Longhorn Server hasn’t been delayed either.

At Mini-Microsoft, the gadfly anonymous Microsoft blogger says, “Vista 2007. Fire the leadership now!” Speaking of which, Margaret Kane at CNET has a report that Steven Sinofsky, Microsoft’s Senior Vice President of Office, is being brought in to get Vista out the door. (More on Sinofsky at the Wall Street Journal.)

But when all the wailing and gnashing of teeth is done, what’s the effect on the bottom line? Regardless of the Vista date, some Microsoft operating system will go out on almost all new PCs. Despite all the hype, Vista only makes a difference to the extent it impedes or accelerates PC sales. Before this news, it looked like PC sales growth was slowing this year. With this delay, there’s likely to be a significant slowdown in the usually big 4th quarter:

“The Christmas season will be slow,” says analyst David Smith, of market researcher Gartner Inc. “They’re talking a delay of weeks, but, by my estimates, it’s 8 to 10 weeks, and they’re the most important 8 to 10 weeks of the year for retail.”

Already, before the announcement, Gartner had predicted a slowdown in PC sales this year, with growth of 10.7%, compared with 15.5% last year.

That’s really bad news for the hardware manufacturers (and retailers) and isn’t great for Microsoft either as overnight stock trading indicated ([1],[2]). Is it bad enough that 2006 PC sales might actually decrease? I won’t hazard a guess, but as I mentioned yesterday, the OEMs and Microsoft need to get the marketers on the case to salvage what they can. Finally, looking to the long term, I doubt that this makes any real difference to the Microsoft client operating system franchise.

In the latest twist in the European Union antitrust case, Microsoft is offering free, unlimited tech support for rivals using the server protocol documentation it has provided. Jeremy Kirk at InfoWorld:

Microsoft will offer free and unlimited technical support to those who license its workgroup server protocols, its latest move to satisfy the European Commission that Microsoft is complying with the 2004 antitrust ruling against the company.

Microsoft had previously offered 500 hours of technical support but said licensees can now get unlimited support as well as on-site assistance. Microsoft said the move was voluntary, although it had been suggested by the Commission during talks in January, said Tom Brookes, a Microsoft spokesman.

The Commission’s response was guarded, although it called the proposal a “constructive” one.

Reuters has more:

“However, technical support is only helpful once the documentation has reached a certain quality standard … the Commission’s preliminary view is that the technical documentation still does not comply with the requirements of the decision,” Commission spokesman Jonathan Todd said.

A Microsoft official said the company had also been working with a monitoring trustee appointed by the Commission and had developed a checklist to deal with problems in the documentation.

“We will leave no stone unturned to overcome the compliance impasse,” said Hoaraci Gutierrez, a general counsel for Microsoft in Europe.

Things sound rather more friendly than earlier this month when Microsoft was bashing the independent trustee and accusing the European Commission of collusion with competitors.