Microsoft sees Spot run personal devices

By Edward C. Baig
USA Today

Think Microsoft is already everywhere? Wait till you see its products on your fridge, nightstand and wrist. That's the idea behind Microsoft's Smart Personal Objects Technology — SPOT — unveiled at the recent Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

If the system takes off, you'll see Spot run on watches, alarm clocks, refrigerator magnets and key chains. It will carry up-to-date customized sports scores, traffic reports and reminders from your personal calendar. Down the road, it might deliver more critical notifications: a power failure in your home, a threat at your kid's school.

The first Spot products — watches from Citizen, Fossil and Suunto — are due in stores in the fall, starting at about $130.

"The watch and the alarm clock become far more functional than they are today," said Microsoft's Bill Gates.

Along with Dell, HP, Gateway and other companies with roots in the computer business, Microsoft is eager to extend its presence in the hot consumer electronics world. Gateway entered the plasma TV market in 2002; Microsoft is starting to make a splash with Xbox.

"We're at (the trade show) as a software provider," Gates said in an interview. "But with Xbox — and it's not some trend — we are literally a consumer electronics manufacturer."

The PC remains central to Spot, at least initially. Consumers must visit the Web and enter the ID of a specific watch or other Spot device. They can then choose the data services — news, traffic, a customized face, etc. — they want to receive from Microsoft as part of a subscription plan (pricing not set). Chips in the devices pick up signals from a radio network built on the underused FM spectrum.

Analyst Rob Enderle of Giga Information Group believes that if Microsoft is successful, there's nothing to stop AT&T or others from offering similar services.

"If you carry Spot out to its likely endpoint over the next decade or so, you begin to see the potential for the elimination of the personal computer as it currently exists," Enderle said.

"The idea of having a bunch of small connected devices that in total could do much of what we currently have a single device do really does forecast a relatively massive change."

Gates puts it differently:

"The different screen sizes you deal with in life — wall-size, desk-sized, tablet-sized and wrist-sized — all have a role, and in a sense none wins over the other. To make it livable for you, software has got to coordinate them."

Thus, when you update your schedule on a computer, it should get automatically updated on your phone or watch.