Microsoft Scraps Its Portable Media Center Platform
By Alexander Grundner |
May 7th, 2007
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Whoa. Here’s a piece of news that’s gone under the radar for quite a long time. It turns out Microsoft decided to stop licensing their Portable Media Center 2.0 (PMC) platform in early 2006 and kept the announcement limited to their hardware partners (via JT & CL). Below is the PMC partner announcement provided by David Bono (MS) on Microsoft Communities.
Note: This information has not been verified, but it seems legit since no new PMC products have been announced or promoted since the end of 2006. If true, it looks like Microsoft heard my calls in 2004 for merging PMC with Pocket PC (now under the Windows Mobile umbrella).
In early 2006, Microsoft released the second version of Windows Mobile for Portable Media Centers to our partners. The second version of the Portable Media Center software enhanced the end user experience and enabled partners to build smaller, less expensive and more competitive devices.
As part of the ongoing review of our product investments, we have decided to take what we have learned from our investments in Portable Media Center and focus our product and marketing resources on building media experiences on connected Windows Mobile powered devices.
With the re-investment of resources in media experiences on connected Windows Mobile powered devices, Portable Media Center 2.0 is the last version of our Portable Media Center software under the Windows Mobile brand. We do not plan any future Portable Media Center software upgrades or marketing activities.
Thank you for all your support- Microsoft is proud of its work, the work of its partners and the devices and services delivered as a result of those relationships. We will continue to work with existing Portable Media Centers licensees to ensure that devices they are developing come to market.
Mike Nash – 14 minutes 44 seconds ago