Home networking ripe for change

PC makers such as Dell and HP stand to gain most from a trend to home networking, a US survey has suggested.

However, the October-November survey -- by US-based researchers NPD Group -- also said that those vendors might not win the bulk of the sales as home networking expanded from handling basic PC-centric chores such as file sharing.

In the survey, large vendors Dell and HP ranked as top two preferred suppliers of home networking gear. Some 49 percent of nearly 10,000 respondents to NPD's poll who already had home networking said Dell was a leader in the field, while 44 percent named HP.

Some 57 percent of those who planned to install a home network cited Dell 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, NPD Group's director of industry analysis.

Although the survey found that most consumers with a home network had rolled out one based on Ethernet, wireless was gaining ground due to the popularity of  wireless and notebooks in the home.

The first 10 months of 2003 saw sales of wireless networking hardware for consumers grow 120 percent and account for more than half of all revenue generated by consumer networking products, NPD Group claimed.

Yet PC giants like Dell and HP could be caught flat-footed if consumer expectations aren't met by functionality, the firm suggested.

'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,' Baker said.

He said users wanted to share multimedia files -- video in particular -- and stream video across many devices such as PCs, 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 of today's home networking falls far short of what the networked home of the future will look like,' said Baker.