June 7th, 2009

Intel has planned to allocate US$884 million for buying Wind River Systems which produces software for embedded devices, in an effort to realize the company’s two priorities.

Embedded devices are machines that do no look like computers but have computers inside - be they factory robots or portable music players.

Intel has been building up its software activities, with 3,000 programmers making some products to sell and more commonly expanding the uses for its chips.

To begin the step, Intel will team up with Microsoft, whose products are tightly connected to Intel’s own flagship line of microprocessors. Microsoft’s Windows Embedded CE operating system is the largest competitor to Wind River’s operating systems.

Possibly the Intel-Microsoft alliances is big enough to handle this sort of competition. After all, Intel has been a big backer of Linux, and Windows Embedded runs on non-Intel chips.

But Microsoft issued a rather stiff-upper-lipped statement in reaction to the acquisition. Microsoft has a robust partner community, of which Intel is a part. The impact on Wind River is harder to evaluate. More than 70% of its software runs on chips made by companies other than Intel.

Indeed, Wind River said earlier this year that it will work to adapt Google’s Android operating system to run on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chips, a major competitor to Atom. How many of its customers will start asking how much Intel is going to support rival chips?

Intel declined to make any executives available to discuss the acquisition. Bill Kircos, an Intel spokesman, said it will keep Wind River as a separate subsidiary, and that it would create appropriate firewalls to make sure that information from other chip makers is not divulged to other parts of Intel.

Palm has launched a new Palm Pre, a well-designed, blissful and multitouch smartphone, which is likely to become a strong competitor to iPhone.

The new Pre has the usual features like Wi-Fi, GPS, 3G (high-speed Internet), Bluetooth (including wireless audio), good camera with tiny flash, ambient light sensor, proximity sensor, tilt sensor, standard headphone jack, 3.1-inch touch screen (the same 320 x 480 pixels as the iPhone, packed into less space).

It comes in a gleaming, flattened black plastic capsule, coated with a hard, glossy, scratch-resistant finish. When it’s turned off, the screen disappears completely into the smoky finish, leaving a stunning, featureless talisman. It is just the right size. The size is smaller than the iPhone - half an inch shorter, though a quarter-inch thicker - and hence more comfortable as a phone.

But unlike the iPhone, the Pre has a real keyboard. The screen slides up, revealing four rows of Thumbelina-size keys. They’re really tiny; a BlackBerry’s keyboard is Texas by comparison. Even so, the domed key shapes and sticky rubber key surfaces make it faster and less frustrating than typing on glass.

When we want to make a call on the Pre, we can just pop open the keyboard and start dialing, or just start typing - matches from your address book come up immediately, or set up speed-dial keys. Call audio quality is about average, but the ringer is too quiet so expectedly there will be complaints about it.

The Pre’s all-new operating system, called Web OS, is eye-catching, fluid and exciting. It borrows plenty from the iPhone - pinch or spread two fingers on the screen to zoom in or out, for example, or flick a list item sideways to delete it - but has its own personality.

Adobe Systems Inc is remaking the company’s software to enable its Flash-based games and videos to run on different handsets as well as PCs without being modified.

As part of the strive, Adobe which is based in San Jose (California) has set up alliances with chip designers and phone makers and offered millions of dollars to developers intending to write programs for mobile devices that use its software.

So far, Adobe  has struggled to break a new market, smart phones, after the company’s success in making the Flash software used on computers everywhere for playing Internet videos.

Unfortunately, the software company’s strive for more than one year to expand beyond the PC has been halted by shifting strategies within Adobe and an inability to offer a version of Flash that runs on the iPhone and BlackBerry devices.

While Adobe later this year will release a trial version of Flash for phones running operating systems made by Palm Inc, Google Inc and Nokia Corp, there is still no timetable for a version of Flash that will run on Apple Inc.’s iPhone or Research In Motion Ltd’s BlackBerry.

Even other companies which had focused on the PC market are now realizing they also need to jump into the fast-growing smart-phone market. Among those adopting this new religion are game companies such as Electronic Arts Inc. and business software makers such as Salesforce.com Inc.

The shift comes as smart phones, which are powerful enough to run programs, are proliferating, just as the PC market has weakened. Smart-phone sales jumped 13% to 36 million units in the first quarter , while PC shipments fell 6.5% to 67 million, according to research company Gartner.

Adobe has much riding on the effort. It has been hit hard by the recession, with sales dropping 12% in the first quarter. Flash, which is embedded in many of Adobe’s products, is a key revenue generator for the company.

Photo by Stephen Shankland/CNET News.