Sunnyvale and San Jose, CA — (press release excerpt) — MontaVista Software has received an equity investment from Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc. (TAEC), a subsidiary of the global electronics firm, Toshiba Corp. TAEC joins a list of high-profile corporate investors, including IBM, Intel, Sony, Yamaha, and Panasonic who have invested in MontaVista Software this year.

“As part of Toshiba's overall strategy to offer complete platform solutions for market segments, such as digital consumer, communication, and high-end embedded applications, we are expanding our collaboration with MontaVista Software to further enhance our platform offering to our customers,” said Farhad Mafie, vice president of the ASSP Business Unit at TAEC. “The MontaVista Linux operating system in conjunction with Toshiba's high-performance MIPS RISC processors provides a highly competitive solution for many key market segments.”

Based on its platform strategies for focused segments, Toshiba provides a complete hardware and software solution for its customers. MontaVista Linux has been ported to the TMPR3927 and TMPR4927, two of its most popular 32- and 64-bit MIPS-based RISC microprocessors. These processors target devices such as printers, DVDs, game consoles and set-top boxes.

According to a recent market research report from Venture Development Corporation (VDC), consumer electronics is the fastest growing market segment for Linux, at an annual growth rate of 49 percent, reaching $149.6 million in shipments by 2006. VDC also estimated that development in consumer electronics will be the largest segment of the embedded Linux market by 2006 with 43.2 percent of total revenue of $346 million.

 
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