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| courtesy:www.gizmodo.com |
Home networking has shifted from being an early adopter technology, to one that is now integral and a key driver to home entertainment as it is increasingly being used to connect PCs, laptops, game consoles, PVR's and a plethora of other mobile devices over a single household broadband connection.
According to Mike Wolf, director at ABI Research, "Our research shows that more than a quarter of home network owners have a games console on their home network, while another eight per cent have connected their mobile phone
So as the market for home networks grows increasingly matures, hardware vendors are looking for new areas of revenue growth, beyond gateway and home router products.
Analysts Parks and Associates note that home networked storage in the US which has gone from 0.3 per cent of multiple-PC households in 2004, will by 2010, hit almost 10 per cent – a 33-fold increase.
And these new areas of focus include media adapters and network attached storage, which are showing initial signs of progress.
But the key to success, according to ABI, will be to create plug-and-play next-generation products that can be seamlessly integrated with existing home media networks.
And just looking at the hard drive sector, its not hard to see that some vendors have caught the prevailing wind and just keep offering more capacity at a lower price.
