Market analyst firm Venture Development Corp. (VDC) recently completed a research study on the worldwide market for embedded software which covers embedded operating systems, software development tools, design automation tools, test development tools, and database management solutions for embedded systems. Despite the current gloomy economy, VDC projects that the market will grow steadily over the next five years, with segment growth rates ranging from 9.5 to 24% CAGR.

Highlights of VDC's findings include . . .

• Sales in the embedded OS industry during 2002 was mainly driven by increased focus on bundling integrated development solutions
  
• Embedded operating system shipments to development teams using the ARM microprocessor architecture continued to grow
  
• Power PC is the leading architecture supported by third party tools, followed by 68k and x86
  
• Linux ranks third behind “proprietary” and VxWorks on a list of embedded operating systems most supported by “unbundled embedded software development tools”

Projections of 2007 revenue and 5-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for the specific embedded operating systems, tools, and database software market segments tracked by VDC are . .

• Embedded operating systems, bundled products, and related services — $1 billion; 10% CAGR
• Embedded software development tools — $525.2 million; 9.5% CAGR
  
• Embedded design automation tools — $682.8 million; 13.5% CAGR
  
• Test automation tools for embedded applications — $200 million; 24% CAGR

An “executive summary” written by VDC analysts Chris Lanfear and Steve Balacco summarizes some of the key top-level findings of the study.

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