Seattle, April 26, 2005 – Today it is time to talk about an important trend that becomes visible during this year’s WinHEC. It seems that a lot of talks at least touch mobile computing or are even focused around mobile computing. Listening to Bill Mitchell, corporate VP Windows Client, this makes a lot of sense. Mobile PC sales are growing much faster than desktop PC sales. On average, the mobile PC market grows with around 15% annually. Mitchell thinks that this can even be more as new devices will be developed. When the PC becomes as personal as a mobile phone we are all of a sudden talking about shipping 700 million devices per year instead of around 50 million. Mitchell challenged the industry to answer the following questions:

• Why is a phone more popular than a PC which is more powerful?
• How can the PC industry drive towards a similar kind of growth?

When those questions are answered successfully we can expect PC’s being owned by virtually every person on the planet, something that is more or less true for mobile phones today.

Typical Mobile PC features

Today’s laptop machine is more and more a desktop on batteries. Customers want a lot of processing power and basically want to run the same applications on the laptop as they were on the desktop. There has also been a movement towards larger screens, right now even wide screens are becoming popular on laptops. Of course large screens drain the battery faster and the laptop itself is only as portable as a coffee maker found in the kitchen.

Moving beyond the current Mobile PC

Bigger is not always better according to Bill Mitchel. He foresees an enormous growing market for new ultra-portable and ultra-mobile PC’s. There are some challenges though. People want to have lighter thinner machines but don’t want to give up anything. However, when new mobile PC’s would be always on, always connected and have great synchronization possibilities we might see the following devices appearing:

• Ultra-portable PC’s with 10-12 inch screens, weighing between 2 and 4 pounds
• Ultra-mobile PC’s with 5-8 inch screens weighing under 2 pounds

The Tablet PC, moving towards success?

The current generation of Tablet PC’s is very powerful, especially thanks to the new Tablet Experience Pack, a set of features to bring the Tablet PC to mainstream users:

• Media transfer – connect to the home network using Windows Media Connect to download / check-off content.
• Ink desktop – Simply write on the desktop of the machine. This feature can be used to write down quick notes without the need to start a separate application.
• Crossword puzzle application that comes with pre-loaded puzzles and the possibility to download new puzzles for free during a period of three years.
• Ink art – Painting and drawing application that takes advantage of digital ink, having smear effects when painting colors over each other to create a real “painting” experience.
• Snipping tool – Partly copy information to any application, including written comments with use of only the Tablet PC pen.

Right now more Tablet PC’s are available in the market for around $100 more than a comparable non-tablet version. With this small difference in price between a Tablet PC and a laptop, the Tablet PC might very well be the driving factor towards new ultra-portable PC’s and ultra-mobile PC’s.

Mobile PC’s beyond Longhorn

In the post Longhorn timeframe we can expect PC’s that truly fit in the palm of a hand with high resolution displays and natural input possibilities. These devices are expected to have the following features:

• ‘Carry everywhere’ form factors
• Rich, natural interaction
• All-day battery life
• Always-connected / always on
• Affordable ($500 - $800)

More about Auxiliary Displays

Today during Andrew Fuller’s session on the Auxiliary Display Platform in Longhorn, these new devices were really revealed. The idea behind an auxiliary display is to make the PC more useful in more different settings, make it more available and extend it. What I didn’t realize earlier became completely clear during this talk. An auxiliary display is in fact an intelligent device with its own processor.

Currently there is support for ARM7 and ARM9 processors. An auxiliary display has a separate connection to the battery or power supply to be able to run even when the host machine is down. To be able to do so, data must be cached in the auxiliary display, for which it needs a minimum of 2 Mbytes or flash memory and 4 Mbytes of RAM. To be able to use the auxiliary display, developers must write applications targeting the Tiny CLR, of which I am now wondering if this is the same Tiny CLR that can be found in SPOT devices. It definitely means that applications for auxiliary displays will be written in managed code. Besides the Tiny CLR, the software platform consists of a new set of API’s that will be available for Longhorn only. Using a control panel like application, the user can configure which applications are visible on the auxiliary display. ISV’s have to register their auxiliary display application (just like a control panel app nowadays). But the user is in control, being able to turn on/off what he or she wants to see on the auxiliary display. Applications are off by default, so user has to explicitly turn them on. That is all for today, but make sure to visit DotNETForDevices again tomorrow for another report from WinHEC.