Multimedia Networking Driving Chip Markets

In-Stat/MDR has released a report stating that multimedia networking will drive the home networking semiconductor market over the next five years.

Multimedia networking will drive the home networking semiconductor market over the next five years, as revenues grow 12% per year to reach over $2.3 billion in 2008, according to In-Stat/MDR (http://www.instat.com). The high-tech market research firm reports that this growth will come despite decreasing per unit prices, as overall unit momentum through 2008 will create a “rising tide” for the connected home silicon market.

“Delivering video and audio entertainment over the network is becoming the main focus of product development as well as end-users,” says Mike Wolf, a Principal Analyst with In-Stat/MDR. “Ethernet, new wireless networking standards such as 802.11n, and new media backbone technologies like MoCA and HomePlug AV, will become standard in many of the new media center and media hub designs hitting the market in the next few years.  Entertainment servers in the home will also drive the demand for network-oriented media processing engines, which In-Stat/MDR believes will be a $700 million market by 2008.”

Designtechnica has reviewed and covered many of the networked media devices on the market and will bring coverage of all the latest products as they become available. Check out our networked media review section for more information.

In-Stat/MDR also projects the following during the 2004 to 2008 forecast period:

• Ethernet and wireless LAN will represent the lion’s share of the PHY market, accounting for over 90% of all physical layer connections shipped in 2008.
• Residential gateways and other home networking devices will help drive the communications processor market, as this overall segment of the market hits $338 million by the end of the forecast.
• Multi-room PVR and other entertainment networking applications will boost both coax (MoCA) and powerline networking (HomePlug AV) to over 23 million connections shipped in 2008.  
• Wireless LAN ICs will be propelled by 802.11g over next two years, which will account for 78% of connections in 2006. 802.11n will begin shipments in 2006, and as the first technology that will enable wireless video networking for the majority of end-users, strong demand will translate to this variant of Wi-Fi. It will account for 55% of the consumer WLAN IC market by the end of the forecast.