GE and Fanuc call it quits

Posted by John McHale

As of yesterday GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms is now called GE Intelligent Platforms after GE and Fanuc reached an agreement to no longer continue their original agreement.

What does this actually mean for the embedded military market? Probably not much.

I think GE Intelligent Platforms will pretty much go along as they have been going, making embedded single-board computers and subsystems for military programs. GE itself has become quite the defense behemoth. A recent market study from ASD Reports (www.asdreports.com) ranked them as one of the top 10 aerospace and defense suppliers alongside Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and EADS.

However, all of this has got me reminiscing about some of our old friends and advertisers gobbled up by GE Fanuc this past decade.

Some of those old friends included -- in no particular order -- Radstone Technology, SBS Technologies, Ramix, VMIC, DNA Computing Solutions, and Computer Dynamics. If I missed any I apologize.

That's quite a shopping list. Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing compiled a similar portfolio of defense electronics suppliers. I guess they saw our magazine as a buyer's guide.

I'm not complaining. I think all this activity is a positive. It shows our market to be one that is steady and continues to attract investment. The strong performance of many defense companies in the current economic downturn is evidence of that.

Yet it has me wondering which embedded defense supplier will get acquired next.

Any ideas?