COMs: A NEW CHOICE FOR EMBEDDED BOARD OEMS

"We believe that increasing numbers of OEMs will adopt the COM approach to board design, particularly under present economic conditions," said Eric Gulliksen, Embedded Hardware Practice Director at VDC. "Usage of COMs will allow these firms to reduce design and debugging costs. COM modules will also allow them to increase the breadth of their product lines without increasing finished board inventories, by offering combinations of different modules with common carrier boards."

Natick, Massachusetts - February 19, 2002 - Computers-on-Modules (COMs), also called Systems-on-Modules (SOMs), an emerging technology, will have a significant impact upon embedded computing over the next several years, according to a recently published report from Venture Development Corporation (VDC). These devices are intended to be mounted upon, and to become integral parts of, carrier board systems or subsystems that require processing power in addition to specialized I/O functionality.

Current and Projected COM Module Shipments (US$ in Millions)

2001: $27.6
2002: $44.4
2003: $77.1
2004: $140.7
2005: $235.0
2006: $364.4

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To view the entire press release including charts go to
www.vdc-corp.com/embedded/press/03/pr03-12.html

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The demand for COMs is being driven by OEMs that need to increase or upgrade processing power, but are reluctant to make the investment in a full redesign. By using COMs, these companies can:

- Reduce time-to-market;
- Concentrate on their areas of prime competency (the carrier boards), rather than devoting resources to designing the processor portion of these boards; and
- Establish a relatively painless path for processing power upgrade for themselves and for their customers.

"We believe that increasing numbers of OEMs will adopt the COM approach to board design, particularly under present economic conditions," said Eric Gulliksen, Embedded Hardware Practice Director at VDC. "Usage of COMs will allow these firms to reduce design and debugging costs. COM modules will also allow them to increase the breadth of their product lines without increasing finished board inventories, by offering combinations of different modules with common carrier boards."

ABOUT VDC

Founded in 1971, VDC is a technology market research and consulting firm that specializes in industrial and commercial electronics, computing, communications, software and power systems markets.

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Report Availability
www.vdc-corp.com/embedded/reports/03/br03-03.html

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For further information about "Computers-on-Modules", contact:

Eric Gulliksen, Practice Director
ericg@vdc-corp.com

Marc Regberg, Senior Vice President
msr@vdc-corp.com

If you would like to subscribe to more VDC updates go to: www.vdc-corp.com/subscriptions