MontaVista is broadening its presence in Japan to serve increasing demand for its embedded Linux operating systems and tools, it says. The company's Japanese partners will now include NEC System Technologies and Toshiba Information Systems, in addition to long-time partner ELT. MontaVista's Japanese partners provide front-line support and other services, along with complementary embedded products and services of their own.

MontaVista has also maintained its own MontaVista Japan branch office since 2000. However, embedded market growth in Japan, coupled with increasing development requirements, has lead to booming Linux demand, it says. The company hopes that broadening its channel will help it better capitalize on market opportunities.

MontaVista's presence in Japan is already formidable; the company garnered some 46.3 percent of embedded Linux projects in Japan in 2003, along wtih 63.4 percent of embedded Linux market revenues, according to market research firm Fuji-Keizai Group, as reported by MontaVista.

Hitoshi Arima, vice president of MontaVista Japan, said, “By collaborating with [these three companies], MontaVista will be able to better serve software developers in Japan and expand the range of competitive products and services it can offer to its customers.”

Toshiba's general manager of embedded system sales, Hiroshi Kiyuna, said, “Our experience incorporates application development, operating system design, middleware, hardware, and software porting.”

Toshiba has also partnered with Trolltech, and will distribute Qtopia in Japan, it said last week. The company partnered with MontaVista as long ago as 2001.

NEC's general manager of server software, Kiyoshi Ikeda, said, “NEC System Technologies has developed skills on Linux in the field of enterprise systems. In this recent collaboration, we will take full advantage of our experience to [enhance and expand] business in the embedded market.”

NEC Soft, LTD joined the OSDL in January of 2004. It announced a partnership with MontaVista on vertical market platforms two weeks ago.

ELT CEO Hide Sakamoto said, “We are proud of our No.1 position in the industry in Japan for MontaVista Linux based system integration, having more than 100 systems deployed.”

One example of an ELT-developed system is the NexTerm SE thin client.

 
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.