According to a new report from BCC Research, embedded technology will continue to evolve and the emergence of open standards will continue to drive growth. Further, it showed that the IoT will help grow the volume of low-cost embedded devices, yielding whole new product lines and spurring growth in the embedded hardware and software technology market.
Embedded devices are dedicated to a single functionality and are often driven by the need to perform a specific task. The applications for embedded markets feature four segments: consumer, communications, enterprise and other. The global market includes both hardware and software technology.
The report calls for the global embedded technology market to reach $169 billion in 2016 and nearly $221 billion in 2021, while embedded hardware, the largest and fastest-growing segment, could total $163 billion and $213 billion in 2016 and 2021, respectively, and embedded software is predicted to reach $5.9 billion in 2016 and $7.2 billion in 2021.
Several key trends are affecting the overall market. In general, the embedded hardware market is showing sign of maturity and some cutting-edge products such as memory (RAM and Flash) have already been reduced to commodities. Nearly every segment considered in this report is weathering pricing pressure and manufacturers are seeking new revenue models. The industry also is undergoing consolidations with mega-mergers among semiconductor firms in both 2015 and 2016. Given the competition in the marketplace and declining profit margins, this report forecasts additional mergers throughout the forecast period.
“The IoT has emerged as a new hot technology in embedded markets. IoT promises to connect every device to the Internet and allow them to talk to each other,” said Anand Joshi, analyst, BCC Research. “The implications of this technology are mind-boggling. IoT devices can exist in many shapes and forms and their volume could be in the billions. This is expected to drive the volume of low cost embedded devices which will create different demands on processing power and connectivity.”
Edited by
Alicia Young
