The war between yesterday’s allies, IBM Corp and Microsoft Corp, looks set to accelerate as more reports come in that Microsoft regards OS/2 as dead. Senior executives last Friday confirmed the decision to scrap OS/2 Version 3.0, and the company is concentrating on getting existing OS/2 users to migrate to NT, New Technology. It is also casting doubt on IBM’s ability to provide Windows compatibility in OS/2 2.0, saying it can’t be done without Microosft’s co-operation. Microsoft in the UK is telling a very similar story, with Windows 3.1 to ship this year, a 32-bit Windows interface also this year, and New Technology itself to ship next year. So, has Microsoft stopped development of OS/2 3.0? IBM has not confirmed that OS/2 3.0 will be available as a product, claims Microsoft, and while it is under contract to develop Version 3.0, Microsoft is now packaging NT without an OS/2 subsystem, and its development efforts are committed to getting existing OS/2 users into NT and Windows. It now describes NT as an operating system, Windows as an operating environment, and appears to be in process of merging the two: they will span the gamut of computers from pen-driven to servers, including RISC-based workstations – with Sun Microsystems Inc’s Sparc apparently having as high a priority as the Advanced Computing Environment’s MIPS Computer Systems Inc R-series RISC-based architecture. The company claims that Windows 3 has an installed based of 4m, MS-DOS has 70m, Macintosh has 5m, and OS/2 has a meagre 600,000 (another source said 800,000 last week but Microsoft should know). By next year, Windows should hit 7.8m, and with numbers like that, Microsoft says MS-DOS and Windows are the core of its strategy now.
