BTRON

Business TRON

Working state	Active
Initial release	1984
Marketing target	Personal computers, Workstations, PDAs
Platforms	Intel 80286
Default user interface	Graphical user interface

Business TRON (BTRON), is a computer operating system with a graphical user interface (GUI) built upon Central TRON (CTRON), itself a subproject of The Real-time Operating system Nucleus (TRON). TRON was launched in Japan in 1984 as an initiative to create a single, universal operating system with an open architecture.

At one point, BTRON had a chance of becoming a popular desktop operating system in Japan. In 1989 the Japanese company Matsushita (now Panasonic) released an Intel-based PC, dubbed the PanaCAL ET, with the BTRON operating system. Though it only had an Intel 80286 processor with 2 MB of RAM, the system could render color video in a separate window. The Japanese government planned to introduce the Matsushita PC in its schools, but the Office of the United States Trade Representative objected, claiming that the plan constituted market intervention and threatened Japan with sanctions; not coincidentally, the former official of the United States Trade Representative office who issued the threats against the Japanese government, Tom Robertson, had been offered by Microsoft the very lucrative position of being their Tokyo-based director for government affairs in Asia.

BTRON was unable to gain a position in the desktop OS market, however other TRON operating systems continue to be extensively used in small devices such as mobile phones, digital cameras, and CD players. The desktop operating system market is dominated by Microsoft's Windows operating system.

External sources

• Linux Insider, "The Most Popular Operating System in the World", October 15, 2003. Retrieved July 13, 2006.
• BTRON Introduction