News and New Products

Open source Linux opens up the OS market

By Richard Wilson -- Electronics Weekly, 3/20/2007

The availability of open source Linux operating systems and software is putting pressure on suppliers of branded commercial embedded Linux products to differentiate their offerings from what is available royalty-free, according to market researcher Venture Development Corporation (VDC).

Linux developers can make use of a wide range of publicly existing device drivers, design systems using the latest communication protocols, supplement existing platforms with technology leveraged from the enterprise Linux domain, and enjoy royalty-free production licensing.
 
According to a new report from VDC, as internal development teams gain more Linux experience the threat from OEMs migrating to an in-house created open-source solution is expected to increase faster than adoption of commercial Linux solutions, especially among larger OEMs who can afford to fund the up-front engineering and maintenance and support of an internal Linux solution.

"While some OEMs have chosen to use a commercial Linux solution, more are using and/or expect to use a publicly available Linux solution in future project development. It is this trend that will continue to put pressure on commercial Linux suppliers to provide value above and beyond the growing sophistication of publicly available Linux solutions," said Stephen Balacco, director of VDC’s embedded software practice.

Similarly, smaller OEMs with limited budgets look to open-source Linux as a more sophisticated RYO solution with support from the open source community.

VDC’s suggestion is that commercial Linux suppliers will need to continue to focus on product development and integration challenges by moving up the value chain from just supplying a Linux OS distribution to offering increased efficiency to the development process by providing high-quality development tools, middleware, Linux platforms and application level solutions, and other resources that support Linux-based engineering.

“In this way, OEMs can focus on their core competencies, the competition, and profitability in bringing new products to market faster, within development budgets,” Balacco said.

Electronics Weekly is the London-based sister publication of Electronic News, part of the EDN Network.