US military domonates embedded COTS market

A new report forecasts that the market for embedded merchant COTS boards, integrated systems, operating systems and software development tools will reach an estimated $3.25 billion by 2008.

A recent report by Venture Development Corp forecasts the market for embedded merchant COTS boards, integrated systems, operating systems and software development tools to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 6.27%, reaching an estimated $3.25 billion by 2008.

The merchant COTS market comprised 0.4% of combined North American and Western European defence expenditures in 2003.

Although this represents only a small fraction of total military expenditures, COTS is still a very attractive market.

US military expenditures account for 47% of global military spending and are more than double those of Western Europe, so it's not surprising that North America comprised 76.4% of the total market for the examined embedded COTS products in 2003.

Also, the study based geographic allocation of merchant COTS product shipments on the shipment delivery destination, not the country of final deployment.

Thus it is probable that some of the merchant boards and systems originally shipped to US destinations were included in aircraft, naval vessels etc that were purchased by foreign governments.

The results also reflect a substantial increase of military spending in the USA brought on by the recent conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.

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