Technology or Entertainment-Where is Your Zen?
Technology or Entertainment-Where is Your Zen?
Jesse Jiang
Issue date: 4/21/03 Section: Technology
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Even though life at GSB seems to be completely separate from the rest of the world, you must have noticed how vital the consumer market has become to our economy. This is reflected not only in the housing and traditional consumer market, but also in the electronics and high tech end of the spectrum: even companies that have historically made most of their profits from the higher margin enterprise market are currently focusing on the individual consumer market.
For example, on March 20th, Cisco announced it is going to acquire a leading player in this field, LINKSYS, for $500 million, representing Cisco's entry into the high-growth consumer/SOHO networking market (which is expected to grow from $3.7 billion in 2002 to $7.5 billion in 2006 worldwide).
So why this rush to the consumer market? Is it because there is no other bright spot to pursue at this point, or there is actually a long-term strategic motive?
Ms. Conigliaro, a Managing Director at Goldman Sachs covering the hardware sector, believes it is the latter: "with the proliferation of broadband, workers will become increasingly mobile, and work more at home. They need sophisticated solutions to connect back to the corporate servers and to the Internet in a secure, reliable, and convenient fashion." Indeed, home networking will become part of the enterprise play.
Now, how does entertainment fit into this picture? This has to do with another important trend - the convergence of the computing, networking, and entertainment systems in the home environment. This very topic was discussed extensively in "The Device War: Controlling Access to Home Entertainment" panel featured in the Future of the Content Conference on April 5th.
Fueled by possibilities enabled by new technologies such as wireless and web services, and by the availability of cheaper hardware and storage, four major systems are vying to be the center of our future homes:
1) Home networking equipment vendors, including Linksys, Netgear, and SMC. Almost all of these companies offer switches that can serve as a WLAN access point, placing them naturally in the center of the communication network, hence placing them in a very strategic position to add in more functions.
For example, on March 20th, Cisco announced it is going to acquire a leading player in this field, LINKSYS, for $500 million, representing Cisco's entry into the high-growth consumer/SOHO networking market (which is expected to grow from $3.7 billion in 2002 to $7.5 billion in 2006 worldwide).
So why this rush to the consumer market? Is it because there is no other bright spot to pursue at this point, or there is actually a long-term strategic motive?
Ms. Conigliaro, a Managing Director at Goldman Sachs covering the hardware sector, believes it is the latter: "with the proliferation of broadband, workers will become increasingly mobile, and work more at home. They need sophisticated solutions to connect back to the corporate servers and to the Internet in a secure, reliable, and convenient fashion." Indeed, home networking will become part of the enterprise play.
Now, how does entertainment fit into this picture? This has to do with another important trend - the convergence of the computing, networking, and entertainment systems in the home environment. This very topic was discussed extensively in "The Device War: Controlling Access to Home Entertainment" panel featured in the Future of the Content Conference on April 5th.
Fueled by possibilities enabled by new technologies such as wireless and web services, and by the availability of cheaper hardware and storage, four major systems are vying to be the center of our future homes:
1) Home networking equipment vendors, including Linksys, Netgear, and SMC. Almost all of these companies offer switches that can serve as a WLAN access point, placing them naturally in the center of the communication network, hence placing them in a very strategic position to add in more functions.