In response to recent rumors of a substantial layoff at Embedded Linux vendor LynuxWorks, LinuxDevices.com contacted the company for comment. LynuxWorks Chairman Inder Singh acknowledged a recent layoff at his company, putting its size at “approximately 15 percent of the company's work force.”

Additionally, Singh strongly disputed rumors that LynuxWorks — which sells both BlueCat Embedded Linux and a proprietary real-time operating system (RTOS) called LynxOS — has virtually eliminated all of their BlueCat Linux developers. “We continue to have a robust development program on our Linux side,” he said. “You'll see a whole series of Linux product announcements coming out between now and the end of the year.”

According to Singh, LynuxWorks has experienced much more of a decline in services income than in product revenue this year. “Customers have been moving to in-house development and away from outside services due to the economic slowdown,” said Singh. “Right now, there's more of a tendency to download the latest Linux from the web, and purchase our tools as a way to help with the actual embedded system implementation.” LynuxWorks recently announced tools support for other companies' Linux distributions, including those of Red Hat, SuSE, and Debian in addition to its own BlueCat distribution.

Of LynuxWorks' targeted markets, the telecommunications sector has been hardest hit, while the medical and military electronics markets have actually shown growth, said Singh.

The recent layoff is LynuxWorks' first this year, added Singh. “The goal is to get to profitability by the end of this year. Actually, although we aren't doing as well as we had planned for 2001, we're doing better than most of our competitors.”

Earlier this year, LynuxWorks scrapped its near-term IPO plans.

And LynuxWorks is not alone. Other Embedded Linux companies have had similar setbacks this year. For example, Embedded Linux vendor Lineo scrapped it's IPO plan last January and eliminated 13 percent of its workforce in July. MontaVista, another leading Embedded Linux vendor, reduced its staff by 20 percent several months ago.

Nor is Embedded Linux the only embedded software market feeling a squeeze from the current economic slowdown. Even embedded software market leader Wind River announced a 20 percent layoff, roughly 400 employees, last week. Wind River expects revenue for the second quarter of this year to be down 19-22% as compared with the second quarter of last year, according to the announcement.

Bucking the trend, proprietary real-time operating system vendor QNX Software Systems is continuing to expand, according to co-founder and CTO Dan Dodge. “We're bringing in a new sales, marketing, or R&D person every week — although we're not hiring as fast as we had been before the economic slowdown.” QNX has nearly 300 employees and currently profitable, said Dodge.

Meanwhile, LynuxWorks plans to continue its dual-OS strategy, insists Singh. “The overall momentum for Embedded Linux is still growing,” he said, “and with our dual-OS strategy, we get to ammortize our expenses over both BlueCat and LynxOS.”

 
This article was originally published on LinuxDevices.com and has been donated to the open source community by QuinStreet Inc. Please visit LinuxToday.com for up-to-date news and articles about Linux and open source.