That's been changing in recent years to some extent as some large companies have entered the market via acquisitions. Motorola Solutions, for example, took over Symbol Technologies and Psion just to later sell them to Zebra, which then also bought Xplore Technologies. Honeywell took over Metrologic and Intermec, and Dell offers rugged versions of their commercial notebooks.

The primary reason why the consumer computing giants do not also dominate the rugged and vertical computing markets is because those markets are so different. Consumer markets are all about volume, low price, and the latest features. Rugged and vertical markets are about meeting very special needs and requirements at generally much lower sales volumes.

In addition, whereas consumer markets are almost exclusively hardware sales, rugged and vertical markets are often about turnkey solutions that may include custom software application development, service agreements, and systems integration. As a result, the sales cycle can be long, and equipment service and maintenance assumes a much more important role.

The following companies are leaders in the rugged and industrial computing field: