Consumer electronics vendors are facing the challenge of educating consumers about Wi-Fi wireless networking and to overcome the perception that Wi-Fi is simply a data networking technology, industry experts warned today.
The results of a newly published In-Stat US consumer survey shows that most planned Wi-Fi deployments are designed to support traditional PC-based data networking applications, rather than as a means to delivering consumer entertainment. However, In-Stat predicts that the prevalence of wireless network availability, especially in home networks, makes it increasingly likely that any consumer electronics device would benefit from Wi-Fi connectivity.
Norm Bogen, In-Stat analyst, said: "Nevertheless, Wi-Fi silicon vendors have fully committed to this market segment, and In-Stat believes that the benefits to consumers of Wi-Fi connectivity in consumer electronics devices are significant enough to build a major market segment over the next five years."
The study found that, whereas current home networks are fairly evenly split between Ethernet and Wi-Fi, future deployments are largely planned as Wi-Fi infrastructures.
According to the analyst firm's report, Untethered Fun: WLAN in Consumer Electronics Consumer Survey, the challenges Wi-Fi faces, in terms of range, bandwidth, security, and Quality-of-Service (QoS), are being addressed by new standards that have either recently been ratified or are set to be ratified over the next few years.
Autor: Robert Jaques
Quelle: IT Week, 18.08.2005
