PHOENIX, 20 Jan. 2014. “The global market for selected VITA components, including VME and VPX board- and systems-level products, was estimated to be $480 million in 2012,” notes Toby Colquhoun, senior analyst with IHS Electronics & Media, during his talk at VITA’s Embedded Tech Trends in Phoenix.
Defense customers are the largest ultimate destination for VITA components – 80 percent; other sectors include industrial automation (13 percent), medical (1 percent), railway (4 percent), and communications (less than 1 percent).
These other sectors will become more important in the coming years,” and their participation will drive costs down, Colquhoun predicts. U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) and U.K. Ministry of Defense (MOD) budgets, historically the largest investors in these system- and board-level components are shrinking year over year; yet, picking up the slack are the growing defense budgets of China, Russia, and the Middle East/North Africa (MENA).
“I expected small form factors to have a big impact,” smaller than 3U, for applications such as unmanned vehicles and portable computers, in the next five to 10 years, Colquhoun says.
