Monterey, CA–Internet Home Alliance spring 2006 Connected Home Research Planning Conference will be held on March 29, 2006, at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida. Passes to the conference are free for Alliance members; non-members may purchase passes for $495 each. Space is restricted to 200 attendees.
Produced by Internet Home Alliance, a cross-industry network of companies conducting collaborative research in the connected home space, the conference is the only digital home conference that gives participants an opportunity to hear the latest connected home research and then work side-by-side with other attendees to develop relevant connected home solution concepts for testing within the Alliance’s collaborative (multi-company) research program.
Past conference attendees have included representatives from companies including Avery Dennison, Cisco/Linksys, General Motors, Herman Miller, Hewlett Packard, Invensys, Leapfrog, Medtronic, Microsoft, Panasonic of North America, SBC Communications, Sears and Whirlpool. Projects developed at the Alliance’s last conference that are in process include “Digital Youth,” a research study involving Hewlett Packard, Cisco/Linksys and SBC designed to assess the relative influence of youth on various home technology purchases; and “Home Networking: Opportunities and Challenges,” a research study involving Microsoft, Cisco/Linksys, Invensys, Panasonic, SBC, SupportSoft, and Whirlpool designed to identify the reasons driving–and the barriers preventing–the purchase, installation use, expansion, and maintenance of home networks and networked devices.
At this spring’s conference, attendees will hear and discuss key learnings from the Alliance’s 2005 State of the Connected Home Market Research, the organization’s most comprehensive annual research study into the digital home market. Among the key findings, the study reveals good news for the connected home market–a critical mass of consumers has adopted the three key foundational connected home technologies: multiple PCs in the home (53 percent of US households), broadband Internet access (70 percent of US households) and home networks (28 percent of US households).
“This finding is very exciting for companies in the connected home space,” said Tim Woods, vice president, Ecosystems Development, Internet Home Alliance. “For the first time, our research reveals that a network platform is in place that can support connected home solutions at a variety of levels. That platform will provide tremendous opportunities for revenue over the next several years but, because consumers won’t be buying these products and services in a vacuum, companies in the space will need to collaborate on their development in order to leverage the opportunity fully.”
To address the need for collaboration, conference attendees will participate in a variety of ideation sessions after the research has been presented. During the sessions, attendees will work together to apply what they’ve learned from the research to develop relevant and viable connected home product and service concepts for testing in the real world. The Alliance conducts various kinds of digital home research on an ongoing basis, providing key learnings to the companies participating in the research project, Alliance members and the industry.
To register for the conference, visit www.internethomealliance.com/events_mkting/industry_conference.asp.
