Electro/Telecom Industry Trends
The Networked Home
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Your home has several independent systems and dozens of individual products designed to increase comfort, safety and convenience. Heating, air conditioning, lighting and cable television are typical home systems. Appliances range from television sets, audio equipment and computers to coffee makers and microwave ovens.Integrated home systems link the independent systems and appliances so they can work together and be controlled from other sources. Almost every appliance and system in your home can be integrated into a larger system, thus improving its performance and convenience. Through the development of standards, an integrated or networked home system is possible.
A glimpse into the networked home of the future reveals appliances linked to the Web through various non-traditional devices, such as personal digital assistants (PDAs), TVs, set-top boxes, ovens and phones. This home continuously and effortlessly receives information that makes it "smart," whether this means updating an electronic phone book or downloading e-mails from work onto a PDA. In the future, the PC may no longer be the sole point of connection within a network.
The networked home exploits services available in a connected world. Consumers will buy services over the Web and will not have to worry about the device they use to send and receive that information. Teleconferencing and other high-bandwidth applications traditionally reserved for corporate networks soon will be readily available at an affordable price in the home market.
Web-connectable consumer electronics will become much smarter. Today the explosive growth of Web commerce in the corporate world has resulted in a billion-dollar industry, and now it is penetrating into the consumer market. Consumer electronics soon will be able to handle everything from e-mail to paying electric bills to refinancing a home mortgage.
What will drive the growth of networks in the home? The interface to the network may be through any number of devices, not necessarily a PC. Because consumers demand reliability and choice, they do not want to be limited by a single connection to the network and consumers cannot be expected to become network administrators. Instead, the networked home will be powered by a myriad of easy-to-use devices.
Information appliances in the networked home will consist of any device, which would be more valuable when networked. All types of devices will become information appliances. One can imagine a washing machine becoming a networked information appliance so that repairs can be handled remotely, or an oven becoming a networked information appliance so that recipes can be updated regularly. Even a refrigerator can be equipped with a bar code scanner so that groceries can be reordered as soon as they are used. However, with technology that is open and works together seamlessly, applications are limited by imagination rather than by technology.
Someday it may be impossible to count the multitude of networked devices in the home and office. People will no longer differentiate their corporate networks and their home networks. The consumer electronics companies will leverage the power, reliability and cost benefits of open standards to provide consumers with the devices and services they require. Although business in the integrated home systems industry has grown gradually, indications are that this market is poised for increased growth. With such powerhouses as Sony Corp., Cisco Systems and Sun Microsystems championing home networking, the home of the future will be here before we know it.