Microsoft shows off 'Windows for cars' concept

As ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley reported earlier, Microsoft is staffing up its Internet of Things team ahead of a bigger push into consumer products, rather than its previous focus on enterprise and industry.

Steve Teixeira, who joined Microsoft's Internet of Things team to take up that challenge, outlined a few ways Redmond will tackle Android's rise in embedded systems at last week's Build conference, as well showing off Microsoft's answer to Apple's own Siri-supported CarPlay .

Microsoft recently added Cortana to Windows Phone 8.1 and, according to Teixeira, the voice-controlled personal assistant will have a key role to play in in-vehicle infotainment systems where voice is an ideal input mode.

Teixeira's demo of a concept Windows in-vehicle dashboard at Build suggests Microsoft hasn't yet integrated Cortana with its IVI system yet, but the feature will help Microsoft overcome minimise the time a driver needs to look away from the road. 

Ford, Kia, BMW, Nissan, and Fiat already use either Windows Embedded or Windows Automtotive in their vehicles, however, Teixeira noted that Microsoft had traditionally left the design of the user-experience to the automotive maker.

"The way folks have been doing this today is using Embedded as the core OS kernel upon which they would build their own user experience [and] value add. We didn't really have a point of view of what should we paint on the dashboard of the car," he noted.

Microsoft now wants Windows Phone to power IVI displays but wants to do more than "blasting the phone UI to the dashboard", Teixeira said. By contast, Apple's CarPlay connects an iPhone to the car through a Lightning cable , using a connection based on a streaming H.264 video feed that returns user input from the touchscreen.

"We're going to create a world where I can bring my Windows device into my vehicle," said Teixeira, adding that the "predominant" standard it will use to do so (though there are more than one) is Mirrorlink, which Nokia was an early supporter of.