>The market for the 8051 family and PICs for example is huge and is likely
  The current CACM has an article by a VP and director of research for
Intel.  He says "The bulk of the IT industry is presently focused on
office automation, e-commerce, and their associated networking.
Judging by our current research profile, an independent observer might
believe that the distribution of new computers is dominated by the 150
million or so new laptop, desktop, and server nodes ..."  " ...  these
numbers pale by comparison to the eight-billion-or-more computational
nodes that will be deployed worldwide this year."  "...  the vast
majority of these devices will be embedded in other objects."