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peter.clarke
joyhaa
what about Contiki, the OS for IoT? once it's widely adopted it might have the ...
Android, FreeRTOS top EE Times' 2013 embedded survey
Peter Clarke
2/27/2013 8:07 AM EST
NUREMBERG, Germany – Android has become the most popular third-party operating system for embedded applications according to a market study conducted by UBM Tech, the publisher of EE Times.
David Blaza, vice president of electronics at UBM Tech, and Alex Wolfe, editor-in-chief of EE Times, provided a preview of the results of the study to embedded electronics executives attending the Embedded World exhibition here.
Android has been selected for 16 percent of embedded projects according to the latest version of the annual survey, which was conducted with more than 2,000 respondents mainly located in North America and Europe between Jan. 17 and Feb. 13, 2013. The full survey is due to be officially launched at the DesignWest Conference and Exhibition in San Jose, Calif., April 23 to 25.
Android was up from 13 percent of projects the year before, putting it in second place behind the most popular option, which was the use of in-house/custom operating systems, which the respondents use 28 percent of the time (see chart below).
However, despite pulling ahead of FreeRTOS and Ubuntu Linux, the news is not all good for Android in embedded applications. Whereas a year before 34 percent of users thought they would be using Android during the following 12 months that percentage dropped to 28 percent in the latest survey. With regard to engineers intentions there appears to be a slight move back towards in-house/custom for projects in the next 12 months.
In addition, while the free operating systems are always popular in term of downloads, the vendors of commercial operating systems, such as Wind River, Micrium and Green Hills, were busy at the Embedded World show pitching their operating systems as complete and robust solutions for particular market segments such as industrial, automotive and high-security applications.
Click on image to enlarge.
Android rising in embedded, but for how long? Source: UBM Tech
The survey touches on a broad range of embedded interests from design team size and design methods through wireless engagement and standards, operating systems, microprocessor and microcontroller selection and on to FPGAs, development software and brand recognition.
Blaza was able to provide some aggregate results and also some European versus non-European comparisons, but stressed that the data is still being prepared and that the Embedded Market Study 2013, would be officially launched at the DesignWest Conference and Exhibition.
For further information about the survey contact Alex Wolfe (alex.wolfe@ubm.com)
Related links and articles:
www.ubmdesign.com
News articles:
Software seen as new battlefront in MCUs
Freescale preps IoT attack with tiny MCU
Intel extends embedded support from Atom to Xeon
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samlepirat
2/27/2013 8:58 AM EST
if you add the microsoft OS, they're above Android.
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przemek
2/28/2013 2:49 PM EST
If you add Microsoft systems you get 19%. If you add all Linux-based systems (Android, Debian, Ubuntu, Redhat, Fedora, etc). you get 43%.
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chanj
2/27/2013 6:20 PM EST
For tablet and smartphone application, Android might have advantage over others since the success of these products are heavily relying on the marketplace. Ubuntu, no doubt, will get some attention. In typical embedded application, memory footprint becomes very critical. The lesser the memory; the better popularity. For this reason, FreeRTOS gets a lot of attention. Commercial OS will likely be around for a while. Defense industry uses might be one of the many primary reason. I am very interested in learning the breakdown of various OS to industries/ applicatons.
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Hey hey this is ejack anyone here
2/27/2013 7:28 PM EST
It's amazing that the share of MQX(Freescale) increased from 0% to 5% in JUST ONE YEAR. In comparision the uC/OS II decreased quite a lot.
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daleste
2/27/2013 11:24 PM EST
Also, TIs RTOS went from o% to 4%.
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dxevc
2/28/2013 10:41 AM EST
Look again. uC/OS increased (I was fooled by the graph at first too)
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dxevc
2/28/2013 10:45 AM EST
OOPS, sorry, I switched colors so your comment is right. I wonder however if those figures (all, no only for uC/OS) refer to effective use or are only "intend to use sometime in the future". I remember a few years ago this issue was raised for this or another similar research.
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peter.clarke
3/1/2013 8:37 AM EST
This is "currently using."
There was another question that probed use in the future.
Interestingly it showed a turning away from Android compared with the future intentions from a year before.
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Miro Samek
2/28/2013 12:22 PM EST
For Micrum (uC/OS-II) the graph shows 9% for 2012 and 5% for 2013. This is almost 50% drop from 2012 to 2013, so uC/OS-II has decreased substantially. Am I missing something here?
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garydpdx
3/2/2013 11:42 AM EST
uC/OS III appears to be missing ... maybe some or many OS II users upgraded?
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Olaf.Barheine
2/28/2013 9:19 AM EST
The success of Android does not surprise me. The programming is very simple. The development tools are really comfortable to use. I think Android will also make its way in user interfaces in the industrial context.
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larry.liu33
3/1/2013 5:05 AM EST
Sorry, do this survey include Apple/iOS or Nokia/Symbian?
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peter.clarke
3/1/2013 7:18 AM EST
I think not as they are used for mobile phones and in Apple's case phones and computer.
The survey seems to bear out that they are not used for "embedded" applications.
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joyhaa
3/2/2013 11:57 PM EST
what about Contiki, the OS for IoT? once it's widely adopted it might have the largest installation base.
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peter.clarke
3/4/2013 4:55 AM EST
@joyhaa
Well the survey would include Contiki if engineers chose to mention it.
This survey indicates that less than 2 percent +/- about 2 percent of engineers are using Contiki.
But as you indicate, engineer usage is not the same as installation base.
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