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18 The PCB Design Magazine • December 2016 The EDA industry has evolved from its humble, free-for-all, Wild West beginnings into a mature industry employing a record 35,000 professionals and turning over a stag- gering $2 billion per quarter. Whilst the Amer- icas market is still recovering, Asia-Pacific and Japan have experienced double digit growth. But Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) have experienced a downturn over the past quarter. Cadence Design Systems, Mentor Graphics, and Synopsys, a.k.a. "The EDA Big Three," have realized significant growth in IC design and si- gnoff and the functional verification sectors. However, revenue for the PCB segment grew just 5.3% in 2014 to $853.1 million. The rev- enue comparison of these leading EDA compa- nies is shown in Figure 1. Although only a small part of the total EDA revenue, the PCB sector has a different pecking order: Mentor Graphics, Cadence, Zuken, Al- tium, Pulsonix, Intercept Technology and Cad- Soft. Mentor, Cadence and Zuken are all com- peting in the enterprise and the mainstream markets and all have double-digit market share. In terms of seat count, Altium, the rela- tive new kid in town, is lower in the spectrum, but positioning themselves into enterprise-level solutions. There are also many free or low-cost PCB applications available such as KiCad, DipTrace, Toporouter, DesignSpark, CircuitMaker, PCB123 and PCB Artist, just to name a few. But these packages mainly cater to the electronics enthu- siast or entry-level market. The major EDA revenue streams come from the following operations: • Perpetual and term licensing of EDA software and intellectual property • Software support and post-contract maintenance • Professional services, including consulting and training EDA companies generally innovate through acquisitions and mergers as it is easier to buy new technology than expend time and resourc- es developing a product and risk losing market by Barry Olney IN-CIRCUIT DESIGN PTY LTD / AUSTRALIA Marketing in the Maturing EDA Industry FEATURE COLUMN: BEYOND DESIGN Figure 1: Revenue comparison of major EDA companies (source: Cadence 10-K filings). Table 1: Professional PCB design software tools.