One of the major benefits of the spread of high-speed mobile data services is the increasing adoption of wireless modems in laptop computers. This wasn’t quite the case in the early days of mobile computing with only the most hardcore road-warriors in niche markets equipped their laptops with wireless connections, because transmission speeds were so painfully slow using the cellular technologies of the time.
As speeds increase with the roll out of 3G services and air-interfaces evolve from EV-DO and W-CDMA to EV-DO Rev A and HSDPA, wireless connectivity becomes progressively more useful to a growing pool of laptop users, says a new report by ABI research.
The original wireless modems for laptops were add-ons in the shape of PC cards, and indeed, according to the market research firm, the PC card market has "still several good years left". Now, progressively more wireless modems are being built right into the computer and it is there that the real long-term opportunity lies. That will produce a change in the dynamics of the market, it says.
The firm estimates that shipments of embedded modems will equal those of PC cards by 2009. "With PC cards," it says, "mobile operators sell the cards and an associated mobile phone service. Changing service provider or upgrading to a better modem is a simple matter of purchasing a new and different card. Embedded modems, however, must be chosen at the time the laptop is purchased — before the service is activated."
Meanwhile, the market for home networking and connected entertainment devices will grow at warp speed over the next few years, as the total value of home networking hardware, gateways, networked storage devices and networked entertainment devices rises from $14 billion in end-user revenue in 2005 to more than $85 billion by 2011.
"This market has reached a major turning point," says ABI Research. "Home networking has moved beyond a basic broadband sharing model to one of networked entertainment and convergence across the PC, consumer electronics and communications devices. The emergence of enabling technologies such as 802.11n for wireless video distribution, HomePlug AV and MoCA as alternative multimedia network backbones, and DLNA media server and device interoperability software, are all solidifying the foundation for an explosion of new devices and applications based on a fully connected home."
"The total number of network connections shipped into the connected home will grow from 247 million in 2005 to over 861 million by 2011," it says. "Wi-Fi will become the most common of the connection technologies."