Turning Down the Hype on Multimedia Networking
New Market dBrief from The Diffusion Group Suggests that Rosy Forecasts
for Multimedia Home Networks are More Hype than Substance
July 1, 2004 (Dallas, Texas) - The widespread belief that consumers are clamoring to embrace multimedia home networks may be making waves in Silicon Valley, but mainstream consumers do not recognize the home network as an important element in a multimedia solution. According to new topic paper from TDG Research, the "any content, anywhere, anytime" paradigm remains lost on most consumers.
"Despite the efforts of technology vendors to morph home networking into a multimedia solution, a significant market for networked multimedia equipment will not materialize in the next couple of years unless substantial effort is put into consumer education," says Predrag Filipovic, Contributing Analyst at TDG Research. "Home network adoption remains driven by data-centric applications such as sharing an Internet connection and PC peripherals, not sharing music of video between PCs, TVs, and stereos."
In order to encourage mainstream adoption of multimedia networking solutions, several key factors must be addressed: defining likely usage models that make sense to consumers; advancing technology implementations to meet consumer expectations; quality, reliability, usage simplicity and cost; raising consumer awareness of both multimedia networking and the availability of Internet-based digital media content; and clearly articulating the values and benefits of connected media.
TDG's new Market dBrief,™ IP-Based Multimedia Home Networks - Hype vs. Reality, is available for free download.
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