WindowsMedia - The Role of Microsoft Corporation in the current Multimedia Industry

Seminar paper from the year 2002 in the subject Computer Science - Internet, New Technologies, printed single-sided, grade: 88% (A), UNITEC New Zealand (Faculty of Business - Department of Information Systems and Computing), course: Interactive Multimedia Development 1, 30 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: This report will evaluate the role of Microsoft Corporation in the current multimedia industry. In order to get an impression about Microsoft s business, there is an overview of Microsoft s products and services at first. Next, it will be Microsoft s strongest competitors in the operating system market as most consumers of multimedia services have a Windows operating system which included a player for multimedia content. This player called Windows Media Player is being discussed and compared to the RealNetworks RealOne player which is regarded as one of Microsoft s strongest competitors in the multimedia business. Consecutively, there is an investigation of electronic devices currently supporting the technology provided by Microsoft including different audio- and video codecs. Finally, there is a conclusion showing the results of the research and giving some recommendations when deciding which multimedia environment to choose: Microsoft or RealNetworks.