Motorola's Metrowerks Acquires Lineo

An anonymous reader writes "It's official: Following weeks of speculation, Motorola's Metrowerks embedded tools subsidiary today has finally announced that they are acquiring the key assets of Embedix Inc. (a.k.a. Lineo), one of the earliest and most popular providers of embedded Linux software and tools."

Comments

Here's another viewpoint / more information

[ekrout]

I read this news earlier on C|Net. They had it embedded (sorry for the bad pun) in an article entitled "Mixed fortunes for embedded Linux".

Please note that this was deemed bad by some for embedded Linux because of the fact that Lineo had to be acquired and no longer was self-sufficient due to lack of profits from software sales.

Lineo's "Embeddix" software for portable devices powers those Zaurus handhelds that some of you are familiar with.

The good news mentioned in that article was that Toshiba just invested a hefty chunk of change into MontaVista software, another player in the embedded market.

Re:Here's another viewpoint / more information

[Bruce Perens]

Well, Lineo did a lot of work on the Zaurus, especially drivers, but the software mostly comes from the community, with the runner up being Troll Tech. Saying that embeddix "powers" the Zaurus is market-speak.

Bruce

Re:Here's another viewpoint / more information

[pyman]

Linux holds a very small portion of the handheld market.

This is because hardware is the driving cost of PDAs. MS and Palm both license there Handheld OSs for between $8-$10, so the cost of the operating system has little effect on the cost of the unit.

Palm have not invested enough in the latest version of their OS, so it is only a matter of time before WinCE surpasses Palm in Market share, as it already surpasses them in OS features.

Because of this, I think it is going to be very hard for Linux to beat Palm and MS in the handheld market. We have to come up with a much better product, with more features, as beating the competion on price does not count for much...

Zaurus

[Bruce Perens]

By the way, OpenZaurus 3.0, the "free" load for the Zaurus, is really cool! I am running it on my Zaurus, with 1/2 Gig SD card and either 802.11b or Bluetooth in the CF slot. When I ssh to it there's little to tell me it's not a powerful server system. And the applications that run on the LCD are pretty good, too. I hear there's a reverse-engineered driver for the SD coming from the iPaq. That's the last component that wasn't Open Source. I will demo all of this on the geek cruise this year, and will also do a talk on international wireless connectivity with GPRS.

Bruce

Re:Sounds suspicious ...

[mdechene]

"Customers want a full solution, up to the application level, from a single source," [Metrowerks vice president of strategic marketing John] Smolucha added. Does this sound a little like the Microsoft/Disney/AOLTW/whoever monopolistic practices to anyone else, or am I just being overly cynical and reading too much into it? How does this fit into the whole free (as in speech) aspect of the Linux developmental ideology?

When he says "Customers", he means "Embedded Systems Developers". And yes, we do want a full solution, up to the application level, from a single source. You want to buy a single dev kit, not a chip programmer from one company, a programming environment from a second, and an O/S from a third. This way you don't have to pull out your hair trying to integrate the environments before you even begin development. And no, it's not a monopolistic statement, as it doesn't preclude other companies having solutions for their own chips. Basically, MetroWerks wants to provide an entire development solution for Motorola chips, kinda like TI wants to provide the same for their chips.

Not good news, for now anyway...

[USC-MBA]

Sadly, this does not amount to very good news. The Metrowerks acquisition comes only eight months after Lineo was forced to recapitalize (translation: they were broke), which itself came only a month after Lineo laid off over a third of its workforce. For one of the first and best-known embedded Linux companies to go under like this does not shine a good light on the industry.

Meanwhile, a glance at Metrowerks website shows the company leaning strongly toward PDA applications, the market for which has been slumping as of late, and, as Gartner Dataquest's analysis tells it:

PDAs are entering a period in which they will be embraced by enterprises as core infrastructure, like PCs.This portends a gradual shift away from Palm and toward Microsoft. Although Palm devices remain more prevalent in enterprises, Microsoft has been adept in providing the building blocks enterprises require. Most companies Gartner talks with are moving with, or planning to move with, the Microsoft wave.

Note that the idea of Microsoft getting a leg up in "core infrastructure" integration means that the company also poses a threat to embedded applications for such "smart devices" as portable phones and videoconferencing technology.

Though the overall outlook may seem bleak for these companies, a winner is someone who can look a challenge and see an opportunity. As a libertarian, I am anti-monolpoly, and thus I hope Metrowerks' leadership can show the kind of vision needed to put Lineo's intellectual capital to good use in counteracting the Microsoft menace.