Microsoft sets its sights on the home

To many people Microsoft resembles a religion more than it does a business.

Its crusading zeal and dedication to the mission of putting a Windows PC on every desktop and in every home only reinforce the impression.

And like every religion it has its evangelical wing charged with preparing the ground for new converts.

In Microsoft's case the evangelists are found in the Home and Retail division and headed by Lisa Brummel, a 14-year veteran of the software company.

Driving forward

Ms Brummel oversees development of all the company's hardware and software products designed for home users.

She oversees a business about $1billion in size. About the same size as cosmetics giant Revlon, says Ms Brummel.

In many of the division's products, such as PC games like the forthcoming Age of Mythology, Microsoft is by no means the biggest player in the market. Often it is only in the top 10 rather than the top five.

This is partly because, as Ms Brummel explains, the role of the division is slightly different.

"We're not here just to put products in people's hands," she says. "We want to get people using the PC in ways they could not before."

She says the main reason that the division started making Microsoft branded mice was to help the adoption of the graphical user interface introduced with Windows.

Ever since then, the home products division has been charged with making products that try to show people just what a PC can do and to evangelise the fact that the best way to do it is with Windows.

After the mouse came products like Encarta that, with its audio clips, images and video tried to make the most of the multimedia PCs that were starting to appear in the early 1990s.

After multimedia came the internet and now, Ms Brummel says, the emphasis is on home networking and high speed net connections.

"Today's multimedia is broadband networking," she says.

Helping hardware

To help get people using these technologies and, expanding the use of PCs into more aspects our lives, Microsoft in the US is producing a range of home networking hubs and wireless products.

European versions of these products are due soon.

The market for such devices is already crowded but, says Ms Brummel, Microsoft is not looking to take over.

Instead, she says, it is just helping to move a particular category of the computer industry forward and push the adoption of broadband.

But despite its many successes Microsoft does not always get its timing right.

Few people now remember Bob, an alternative interface to Windows 3.0 for novice users that made the screen look like a home. It was a huge failure.

"When you really invest in a market you are going to make products that are not going to appeal to people," says Ms Brummel, "and Bob was one of them."

Luckily, said Ms Brummel, Microsoft's revenues in other areas mean it can easily absorb the losses caused by these experiments.

It is a luxury that many of Microsoft's competitors wish they had.