Home Networking Market Ripe For Change

But as home networking expands from handling basic PC-centric chores such as file sharing, those vendors may not be the ones that end up with the bulk of the market, concluded NPD's study.

The survey, which was conducted in October and November, ranked Dell and HP rank as the number one and two preferred suppliers, respectively, of home networking gear by those who have both already installed a network, and those who plan to.

Forty-nine percent of the nearly 10,000 respondents to NPD's poll who have created a home network tagged Dell as a leader in the field, for instance, while 44 percent named HP. Those who have not implemented a home network think even more highly of Dell; 57 percent cited the Texas computer maker as a premier supplier of home networking hardware.

"Given that most of what consumers do with home networks today are PC centric tasks, it's not surprising that most consumers said they would turn to PC companies to supply their networking gear," said Stephen Baker, The NPD Group's director of industry analysis in a statement.

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Although the survey found that the majority of consumers with a home network have rolled out one based on Ethernet, wireless is gaining ground, said NPD, due to the popularity of notebooks in the home and the look-no-cable advantage of wireless.

Through the first 10 months of 2003, sales of wireless networking hardware for the home grew by some 120 percent, estimated The NPD Group, and accounted for more than half of all revenue generated by consumer networking products.

But the future of home networking may be a rougher road as consumers' expectations meet the wall of real-world functionality. And then PC giants like Dell and HP could be caught flat-footed.

"The question for the future is how consumers will view these providers when the uses begin to involve more extensive inclusion of home entertainment gear," said Baker.

With users demanding to share media files -- video in particular -- and stream video among a plethora of devices that include not just the PC, but televisions, digital video recorders, and satellite services, today's leading suppliers of home networking gear must step up their offerings in 2004 or risk disappointing customers.

"The reality ofhttps://www.crn.com/sections/digital/default.asp today's home networking falls far short of what the networked home of the future will look like," concluded Baker.

For more on home networking see CRN's Digital Convergence site.

This story courtesy of TechWeb.