Microsoft has been an executive member of IrDA since its founding and promotes the IrDA effort to standardize infrared communications protocols across the industry. Microsoft's infrared products are designed to comply with the IrDA specifications. This insures interoperability between IR-capable computers running Windows 95 and all the other devices that support the IrDA specifications.
If you are an independent software vendor (ISV) writing applications for IR-capable computers running Windows 95, IR drivers built with the Windows 95 IR DDK enable you to use standard Win32 communications APIs to transfer data between IrDA-compliant devices. Many existing applications that communicate over serial and/or parallel cables using these APIs will communicate over IrDA-compliant IR links without any reprogramming.
Microsoft's future IR products will also be designed to comply with the evolving IrDA standards which will take advantage of the dynamic, ad-hoc nature of the media and hardware advances (such as fast IR data exchange at speeds up to 4.0 Mbps).