"Paper" asked for developer perspective on WIND's products...
I haven't done much looking at the business model, but I worked for the last 2.5 years on a new medical device that uses VxWorks as its embedded OS. My team chose VxWorks for this project over other competitors.
For "high end" embedded systems, there is no question that WIND is the leader, versus its traditional competitors. VxWorks is the first embedded OS supported by virtually all new 32-bit, embedded computer boards. Windows is ubiquitous in the desktop world; VxWorks aspires to be ubiquitous in the embedded world. My impression is that WIND is, at least, making the most money on embedded software.
Second place is Integrated Systems (www.isi.com), with pSOS. From this developer's perspective, pSOS is clearly inferior to VxWorks/Tornado, both in terms of technology and market momentum.
From a long term investment perspective, the main competitors are Windows NT and Windows CE. (My development team did not seriously consider either of these, for many reasons: real-time performance, cost, hardware requirements, etc.) Microsoft is not capturing the hearts and minds of embedded developers. My perception is that the embedded community sees MS as having stumbled badly in this market so far. So far.
As a long term investor, I see the current (low) stock price for WIND being the result of two main factors:
(1) Poor investing climate for small cap stocks
(2) Perceived as competing with Microsoft
For a couple of years, I held off investing in WIND, for reason number two. I wanted to see how MS would fare. I now believe that the market is huge, and that three or four players will take different slices of it. I bought WIND at 20 a few months ago, from whence it promptly dropped. I have no plans to sell in the foreseeable future.
A novice investor's suggestion: if the recent run up in WIND was the result of short term investors piling on, then it's no surprise that the price dropped on the H&Q report.
I'll bet Ann Winblad didn't sell any of her shares! |
