A CONSORTIUM of major Taiwanese manufacturers that includes Benq, FIC, Compal, and Acer has formed an alliance that will push for multiple standards to be adopted, in an attempt to cut off Microsoft at the gulch. According to today"s Taiwan Economic News, the alliance will seek to create different standards for digital home appliances, because the Wintel standards means a lack of different PC products and cut profit margins.
But the group, which obviously has a hardware axe to grind, faces a daunting challenge against the Digital Home Working Group, formed by Intel to simplify sharing digital consumer media. This is a non profit organisation, but is an attempt to standardise hardware which will ultimately mean bigger profits for the firms that are promoting it.
That group has nearly 20 members including Microsoft, Intel, IBM, Samsung, Sharp and the other usual suspects. At the last Computex held in September, a number of Taiwanese hardware vendors expressed resentment at Microsoft Media Center, which they said added unnecessarily high costs to AV (audio visual) devices they were peddling.