Time to Market: Handheld Consumer Electronics Devices and Its Impact on Software Quality

This article discusses the rapidly expanding market of always-on, always-connected consumer electronics (CE) devices; their shrinking time to market; the constant pressure experienced by the product manufacturers, silicon vendors, and software developers to launch these products on time; and the side effects of such a tight product pipeline schedule. The latest development happenings in the industry, more specifically in the open source area to tackle this scenario for the overall benefit of the vendors, developers, and the consumers, are also discussed. The working model of Linaro, a not-for-profit engineering organization, is described as a case study.