Two global operating system giants have teamed to put a prettier face on everyday electronics.
U.S.-based software giant Microsoft has teamed with Japanese non-profit group T-Engine Forum to develop a "two-in-one" operating system for network appliances and other electronic devices. The Japan-based T-Engine Forum, comprising 250 companies, oversees Tron (The Real-time Operation system Nucleus), the world"s most widely-installed operating system. It is used in everything from digital cameras, engine management systems to fax machines to office copiers.
"Nearly 100 percent of the operating systems used in cell phones now being sold in Japan are Tron," University of Tokyo professor Sakamura Ken was quoted as saying in Look Japan magazine last year. He was a member of the team which created Tron, which was released into the public domain, free of license fees, in 1984. "It isn"t a household name like the names of personal computer operating systems because it is used in products and devices, but worldwide there are one billion copies in use, tens of times more than Microsoft"s OS," he said in the report.