Questão 606234

READ THE FOLLOWING TEXT CAREFULLY

1 You can run from Microsoft, but the places you can hide are getting

2 scarce. The company controls your desktop with Windows and has

3 invaded your living room with the Xbox. Now it wants to get inside your

4 cell phone too, tuming it from a simple communication device into a

5 mini-PC. Of course, just as Microsoft and its longtime partner Intel

6 don't actually put together PCs, they arent going to start chuming out

7 cell phones. What the two companies announced last week is a plan to

8 license their blueprint of the innards of a cell phone to manufacturers

9 Wireless companies can decide what the handset will Iook like and

10 how much of the Microsoft software it will contain While vastly

11 increasing the versatifty of your cell phone, the insides are standard-

12 ized and therefore much easier to make.

13 It's a smart move, seeding ne marketplace wh Microsoft products and.

14 Intel chips under cover of democratizing the industry. Nokia, maker of

15 the world's most popular cell phone, is Microsoft's main stumbling

16 block, and the two companies are likely to spend the better part of the

17 next decade disputing control of this \$91 billion industry.

18 All this competition should be good news for road warriors and

19 teenagers. Screens and memory sizes will get larger, mobile music

20 and vídeo services wil proliferate, and sending instant text messages

21 (assuming Microsoft and Nokia can agree on a common standard)

22 should become just as popular in the US. as It is in Japan and

23 Europe. And if you stil want an old-fashioned cell phone without bells

24 and whistes, you wil pay a lot less than you do now, since wireless

25 carriers will aim to make most of their money on the extras.

(Time, March 4, 2002, p. 30 — Adapted)

Choose the option that best completes the following statements, according to the text.

The words "stumbling block" (lines 15 -16) mean