While I don't yet concur with all of Matt's reasoning WRT WIND's prospects vs. Linux, I think you may have missed Matt's point in this case which was: The consumer market only represents about 7% of the overall market for embedded RTOS. [By consumer market, I assume Matt means "consumer facing" (i.e. devices that actually provide a user interface).] Even if Linux ends up dominating that market, WIND still has huge opportunities in the other spaces. Also, WIND can even make money on Linux by selling their tools/support.
To me, the more important issue is the one Matt raises about the importance of reliability. I'm not sure WINDs reliability advantage is as important as he makes it seem. I suspect there are many types of organizations-e.g. auto companies-that would be quite willing to pony up additional R&D for testing/customization of an open source Linux to meet reliability requirement if doing so would allow them to avoid royalty revenue on millions of units. WIND can, of course, compensate by lowering royalties--which is what they will probably do. This, in my opinion, is the most significant affect of the open source LINUX threat.
I have been long WIND since 2/99 and still think they will do well long-term; however, for the reason mentioned above, I doubt they, or anyone else, will ever become "the Microsoft of the embedded world." What allowed Microsoft to dominate the consumer space was application capture. (The old catch 22 scenario: Consumers want the OS that runs the applications they like, and application vendors only support the OS's that consumers are buying; hence, once an OS becomes the leading platform, its position is virtually unassailable.) Unfortunately, this sort of lock doesn't work as well in the embedded space where devices mainly run a single application. In this environment, the *overall* reliability of the OS doesn't matter to those writing the applications. Rather, what matters is how reliable the OS is for *their* application. Also, buyers of embedded devices don't care in the least what OS is running inside, they just want it to perform its dedicated function reliably.
Disclaimer: I have only limited knowledge embedded development, so the above are my *impressions*. I would very much appreciate any perspectives from folks more informed on the embedded space than myself who could increase my understanding here. (I'm quite willing to be "bashed" here if it will increase my understanding of WINDs position. As a WIND long, I would be delighted to find out that WIND's position is even stronger than I thought. :-) |
