The authors of the study added, however, that Wind River continues to hold "a commanding market leadership position" in the specific area of real-time operating systems, which it has long dominated.
The study, compiled by Venture Development Corp. (VDC, Natick, Mass.) reflects revenues earned from the sale of real-time and non-real-time embedded operating systems. Because it includes non-real-time operating systems, the list of revenue earners includes such companies as Palm, Inc. and Symbian, Ltd., which sell operating systems for personal digital assistants (PDAs) and mobile handsets.
VDC analysts said they broadened the scope of the new study because the embedded market is changing so rapidly. "Five years ago, there was a much smaller circle of companies supplying embedded operating systems," said Stephen Balacco, VDC's embedded software analyst and an author of the study. "But many of the [embedded] devices that are being built today don't necessarily have hard real-time requirements."
Hard real-time operating systems, which are characterized by deterministic, low-latency performance, have traditionally made up the bulk of the embedded systems market. Such systems have typically been used in aerospace, military, industrial automation, telecommunications and automotive applications, as well as in other safety-critical applications that require fast response times.
In contrast, non-real-time operating systems are increasingly being used in consumer applications like set-top boxes, mobile phones, web pads and PDAs.
Wind River, which has traditionally dominated the embedded OS market, emphasized last week that it has not lost its status as the biggest player in the real-time embedded segment. "The inclusion of revenue from the handheld market changes the picture," said Anders Kamperin, marketing manager for Wind River Systems. "If you looked at the embedded market five years ago, you wouldn't have seen Palm or Symbian near the top."
The study placed Symbian in third and Palm in fourth in the revenue list.
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Worldwide Shipments of Embedded OS's, Bundled Products, and Related Services, segmented by Leading Vendors for 2002.
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Balacco said, however, that the study's results show how far Microsoft has come since its embedded reorganization in May 2000. "When they created a platform group for embedded appliances, they sent a signal to the industry that they were establishing a long-term commitment to embedded," he said. "This study shows the results of that commitment."
Wind River, meanwhile, has been affected by the downturn in the telecommunications market, which Balacco said once made up almost 60 percent of the company's business. "There's no doubt that Wind River has felt the effects of the telecom slowdown," Balacco said.
In the past three years, Wind River's revenues have slipped from $438 million to $351 million to $249 million, a Wind River spokesperson said. Balacco said VDC's study, titled "Embedded/Real-Time Operating Systems and Toolkits," proves that embedded suppliers need to be flexible if they want to meet changing market needs. "There's pressure on vendors to continue to examine and modify their business models," Balacco said. "They need to be able to adapt to new market forces."