If you have several years development experience in Eclipse plugin, then you will know that a good model is the key for a successful UI, even UI stuff is important, but the king is model behind it.

As a important model driven development implementation, EMF become more important than before, you can see that from:
- EMF project itself has many subproject now
- A whole model toolkit has been setup which include many projects
- Some important Eclipse Top projects has embraced EMF such as WTP, DTP, TPTP, BIRT, VE and GMF etc.

Even EMF growed up from Eclipse, it will become useful for projects outside of Eclipse environment.

Any projects from GUI to runtime can use EMF as a tool for them model generate, I believe EMF will play a important role not only in Eclipse but also in runtime development.