Shipments of network-enabled consumer electronics and media devices will exceed those of home gateways, routers, network adaptors and home network storage products by 2012, says ABI Research.
Total shipments of network-enabled consumer electronics and media devices should grow from 92m in 2007 to almost 460m in 2012, while shipments of network-enabled home gateways, routers, network adaptors and home storage products are expected to reach 368m by 2012.
The trend points to a “graying” of the maturing home networking hardware market (many broadband consumers in developed economies already have home network hardware installed) while the large majority of consumers have yet to connect a non-PC device to their network.
“The question for home networking companies,” asks ABI, “Is can they make this transition? Or will the networked entertainment market be subsumed by more traditional consumer electronics companies?” Ah, good question…
