2003 Embedded Open Source Software Business Plan
構思了許久的台灣在地的生意模式，其實是應該要進入嵌入式系統軟體的服務業。其實同樣的概念下，台灣的軟體服務業也相同的非常值得投入，我決定把自己的Business Plan以GFDL的形式出版。
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".
2003 Embedded Open Source Software Business Plan - One-stop shop of Mobile Software solution for Handheld / Smartphone devices
Author: Jouston Huang
Taiwan market overview
On PDA market, WinCE is already have 55% market share because of Microsoft's strongly recommand and marketing. While Palm original have almost 100% market share 6 years ago, but they only have less than 45% under strong competition. Some analyst said Palm might only have 30% market share end of this year. Because of there is no any Linux PDA launch yet, Linux hold none of market share at this time frame.
On desktop market, Microsoft dominate the market.(~98.5% in Taiwan), MacOS have 1% market share while Linux only hold 0.02%. In this 0.02%, the major players are ThizLinux from HongKong, Red Hat and Mandrake.
In embedded open source software industry, we could categorize products into two sectors:
1. Devices without UI.
2. Devices with UI.
It is a well-known fact in the first sector, we have already saw a lot of products distributed on market like broadband routers, thin-servers in industrial automation industry, and gatekeepers in telecomm market...etc. which using Linux as their operating system.
In the other sector, there are many more fancy devices like PDAs, POS systems, webpads and mobilephone devices...etc.
We believe the first sector could provide business opportunities within six months and the second sector bring us mass amount of revernue in the future. Besides, we strongly believe Linux in handheld market will be expand within one and half years. The reason are:
1. Microsoft is formidable and still cost too much for this kind of cost-sensitive devices even they lower the price. That cause hardware vendors try to find another way, and Linux is the best choice for it's relative lower price, flexible and full functioned for a handheld devices.
2. In IPC(Industrial PC) industry, Linux hold more and more market share from 2001. Even if the "real-time" function didn't exist before 2.6.0 kernel's launch.
3. The trend of PDA/smartphone/webpad will be a sub-notebook replacement. Because micro processors have very good performance and are cost-effective today. That creates mass amount of business opportunity of embedded linux software components in these three market segmentation:
1) Smartphone: DBTel, GVC, Acer
2) PDA
2a)PDA vendor: Acer, Leo/Fic, ECS, 神寶
2b)PDA foreign vendor: Compaq, IBM, HP
2c)PDA potiential vendor: 無敵, 快譯通, 遠見, 仁寶
2d)PDA OEM/ODM vendor: HTC, LEO...etc.
3) Webpad
3a) Level 1: ECS, Asus, Gigabyte, Microstar, Leo/Fic, Abit, 仁寶
3b) IPC, Advantech, IEI...etc.
3. More and more major players in mobile market sell devices with
embedded linux like Sharp and Motorola will facilitate market growth.
So we believe that is right timing to go into embedded open source software market in Taiwan.
Issues
1. Strong MS pressure for vendor to use WinCE.
2. Price competition is strong
3. Weak market share in Taiwan comparing with other embedded OS. (except IPC and carrier grade industry)
4. It need traditional Chinese version of software components for Taiwan market.
5. Hardware vendors are mostly OEM/ODM vendors.
Critical success factor
1. Have a fully localization(for tradtional Chinese), stable and very cost-effective one-Stop Shop Solution for Handheld/smartphone software market.
2. Strong traditional Chinese support team.
3. Strong partnership with embedded software ISVs.
4. Hundreds of software components from software partners.
Sales strategy
1. Partnership with hardware OEM/ODM vendors and provide them total solutions for embedded products.
2. OEM sell into target vendors for market share purpose.
3. Strive to build up successful reference account.
4. Focus on Taiwan as phase I, China and HongKong as phase II.
5. Combine with vertical supply chains(with hardware and software), build an one-stop shop.
Action plan
1. One-stop shop
2. PDA/smartphone/webpad vendor visit
Revenue forecast & Head count
In 2003, this department will only have one PM
Appendix A) SWOT analysis between Linux, PalmOS and WinCE
References:
http://taiwan.cnet.com/enterprise/casestudy/story/0,2000040297,20071641-1,00.htm
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".
Author: Jouston Huang
Taiwan market overview
On PDA market, WinCE is already have 55% market share because of Microsoft's strongly recommand and marketing. While Palm original have almost 100% market share 6 years ago, but they only have less than 45% under strong competition. Some analyst said Palm might only have 30% market share end of this year. Because of there is no any Linux PDA launch yet, Linux hold none of market share at this time frame.
On desktop market, Microsoft dominate the market.(~98.5% in Taiwan), MacOS have 1% market share while Linux only hold 0.02%. In this 0.02%, the major players are ThizLinux from HongKong, Red Hat and Mandrake.
In embedded open source software industry, we could categorize products into two sectors:
1. Devices without UI.
2. Devices with UI.
It is a well-known fact in the first sector, we have already saw a lot of products distributed on market like broadband routers, thin-servers in industrial automation industry, and gatekeepers in telecomm market...etc. which using Linux as their operating system.
In the other sector, there are many more fancy devices like PDAs, POS systems, webpads and mobilephone devices...etc.
We believe the first sector could provide business opportunities within six months and the second sector bring us mass amount of revernue in the future. Besides, we strongly believe Linux in handheld market will be expand within one and half years. The reason are:
1. Microsoft is formidable and still cost too much for this kind of cost-sensitive devices even they lower the price. That cause hardware vendors try to find another way, and Linux is the best choice for it's relative lower price, flexible and full functioned for a handheld devices.
2. In IPC(Industrial PC) industry, Linux hold more and more market share from 2001. Even if the "real-time" function didn't exist before 2.6.0 kernel's launch.
3. The trend of PDA/smartphone/webpad will be a sub-notebook replacement. Because micro processors have very good performance and are cost-effective today. That creates mass amount of business opportunity of embedded linux software components in these three market segmentation:
1) Smartphone: DBTel, GVC, Acer
2) PDA
2a)PDA vendor: Acer, Leo/Fic, ECS, 神寶
2b)PDA foreign vendor: Compaq, IBM, HP
2c)PDA potiential vendor: 無敵, 快譯通, 遠見, 仁寶
2d)PDA OEM/ODM vendor: HTC, LEO...etc.
3) Webpad
3a) Level 1: ECS, Asus, Gigabyte, Microstar, Leo/Fic, Abit, 仁寶
3b) IPC, Advantech, IEI...etc.
3. More and more major players in mobile market sell devices with
embedded linux like Sharp and Motorola will facilitate market growth.
So we believe that is right timing to go into embedded open source software market in Taiwan.
Issues
1. Strong MS pressure for vendor to use WinCE.
2. Price competition is strong
3. Weak market share in Taiwan comparing with other embedded OS. (except IPC and carrier grade industry)
4. It need traditional Chinese version of software components for Taiwan market.
5. Hardware vendors are mostly OEM/ODM vendors.
Critical success factor
1. Have a fully localization(for tradtional Chinese), stable and very cost-effective one-Stop Shop Solution for Handheld/smartphone software market.
2. Strong traditional Chinese support team.
3. Strong partnership with embedded software ISVs.
4. Hundreds of software components from software partners.
Sales strategy
1. Partnership with hardware OEM/ODM vendors and provide them total solutions for embedded products.
2. OEM sell into target vendors for market share purpose.
3. Strive to build up successful reference account.
4. Focus on Taiwan as phase I, China and HongKong as phase II.
5. Combine with vertical supply chains(with hardware and software), build an one-stop shop.
Action plan
1. One-stop shop
| Task | Who | When | What | Where | How |
| solution survey | PM | 2003/10~2003/11 | Survey all possible embedded open source solutions. | world-wide | We survey all possible solutions as posible as we can. |
| negociate w/ software vendors | PM,CEO | 2003/11~2004/6 | Talk business with selected software vendors. | world-wide | We talk all possible business in Taiwan, ask software vendors give us exclusive contract or partnership in Taiwan. |
| Get contract | CEO | 2004/2~2004/6 | Make contract with software vendors wish build partnership with us. | world-wide | Negociated with alliance partners and try to deal a great contract |
| Build support team | PM | 2003/10~2003/3 | Make sure we have enough sales and engineer to handle these software products. | Taiwan and BJ | Hire 3~5 engineers. |
| Wrote technology documents | support team | 2004/1~ | Do document jobs let customer understand more about our solutions. | Taiwan and BJ | To keep core technologies, engineers must keep everything in record. |
2. PDA/smartphone/webpad vendor visit
| Task | Who | When | What | Where | How |
| visit all vendors on list | PM,CEO | 2003/11 | Visit all listed customers relative to PDA/Smartphone market. | Worldwide | door-to-door visit all relative hardware vendors. |
| Follow-up check | PM | 2003/12 | List posible customers with already visited. | Taiwan | After DTD visit, we need to find out which customer is posible to deal with us. |
| Follow-up visit | PM | 2004/1 | visit all posible customers who list on follow-up list. | Taiwan | Talk business with posible customers |
| Get contract | Who | 2004/3 | Make contract with posible customers | Worldwide | Get contract with customers |
Revenue forecast & Head count
| 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | |
| Revenue forecast in rough idea(USD) | 500K | 1.5M | 3M - 5M |
| Head count (in person) | 2 - 3 | 6 - 10 | 12 - 20 |
| 2004 revenue forecast plan | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Q1 | Q2 | Q3 | Q4 |
| None | None | 200K | 300K |
| None | None | 200K from embedded server market | 250K from embedded server market, 50K from handheld project |
In 2003, this department will only have one PM
Appendix A) SWOT analysis between Linux, PalmOS and WinCE
| strenth 1. Open source 2. Plenty of applications compare to WinCE 3. WinCE is fat, Linux is thin. 4. Linux is cost-effective compare with WinCE 5. More flexibility compare to WinCE 6. Customers can get part of the source code which can be recycle for further use. | weakness 1. Because Microsoft's strongly pressure and marketing, hardware vendor been force to use WinCE develop their product. Like LEO, Advantech...etc. 2. Taiwan government doesn't support Linux industry. 3. We don't have traditional Chinese version yet. |
| opportunity 1. Hardware vendor don't want to be bound on WinCE solution, they want more choices. 2. Linux software industry is already mature in these days. 3. Palm lack of many fuctions which are essential requirement of modern andheld/smartphone devices. They will lost their market in these two years while PDA market grow up. 4. Embedded Linux get more and more market share today in embedded server and telecomm industry. | Treat 1. Embedded Linux have rich diversity, that makes applications might can't be execute on every Linux devices. |
References:
http://taiwan.cnet.com/enterprise/casestudy/story/0,2000040297,20071641-1,00.htm
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