In WIND's first announcement about the Qualcomm design win they mentioned specifically Globalstar, indicating VxWorks would be in the satellites, base stations and exotic (my word) handsets and other wireless devices. This arrangement would bring in lots of development seats since QCOM is burning up a $500 million development contract with Globalstar (of which it is a 7% owner). Downstream run-time licenses would come from both the infrastructure side and handsets.
Meanwhile, QCOM is busy advancing CDMA within PCS's around the world, and is starting in the Wireless Local Loop business. My guess is that VxWorks may well be in most of QCOM's , Nortel's and Huges Network Systems base stations (infrastructure), probably multiple instances (targets) per station. This would equate to low thousands of targets per month with fairly high unit run-time license fees. Not bad.
But the big potential for run-time license revenues is when VxWorks is in handsets. Is it in the Sony/QCOM CDMA handset? Will it be when QCOM introduces smarter devices? What about Nortel's smart wired phones? When the answer to these questions starts to be yes, then run-time license revenue from CDMA applications will soar.
Within a few years, data applications will be very big on digital wireless, probably much bigger than voice. At that point most datasets will require an RTOS, which will be great for WIND, but also good for MWAR, INTS, GWRX, and Windows CE. Java will be a popular language for these applications, but so will traditional development languages for relatively static applications. The Java implications connect to all that WIND is developing with the Oracle and Sun with the NC, and, rumor has it, with Navio for internet appliances. Navio will be a very big player in the internet appliance space. (This raises a question about relationships with Unwired Planet. MWAR made a $5,000,000 equity investment in Unwired Planet, and it a participant along with Geoworks (GWRX). More recent, QCOM also invested in an became a player in Unwired Planet.)
VxWorks is also used for GSM wireless in much the same manner, for example with Hughes Network Systems. However, I think WIND may encounter more competition from MWAR on the GSM side.
Allen |
