Scottsdale, AZ–According to In-Stat/MDR, the continued need for broadband sharing and a growing interest in entertainment networking will drive the total value of equipment with a home networking connection of some type from $8.3 billion in 2004 to $17.1 billion by 2008.
“The emergence of media networking continues to be the most exciting part of the home networking market,” according to Mike Wolf, principal consumer connectivity and content analyst with In-Stat/MDR. “Many vendors have announced or released media networking products to connect entertainment devices to networks in order to share audio and video content around the home. We expect Microsoft’s Media Center Extender technology to accelerate this trend going forward into 2005.”
In-Stat/MDR has also found:
– Asia will eclipse North America for the region with the most home networks by 2008, rising from 27 percent of all home networks worldwide in 2004 to 36 percent in 2008, with North America dropping from 46 percent to 34 percent in the same time span.
– The wireless LAN market has evolved from being 802.11b dominated to one where 802.11g and multi-band 802.11 represented nearly 50 percent of shipments in the fourth quarter of 2003.
– New technologies such as MIMO and wireless 1394 will make WLAN technology an increasingly viable alternative for multimedia networking.
– In-Stat/MDR’s consumer surveys show retail storefronts have become the dominant place for purchasing home networks, while on-line shopping has declined in importance.
– Linksys was the leading vendor of media adapters in 2003, while network disk vendor Ximeta led the emerging market for consumer network storage.
In-Stat/MDR believes that the entertainment content that people consume will increasingly be delivered to the home over a variety of broadcast and IP-based channels, then redistributed over some form of network once in the home. “Comcast’s recent announcement of their home network gateway initiative and multi-room PVR efforts by Echostar and other service providers show how the home network will be a central delivery and content consumption platform in the future,” Wolf said.
