Digital Home

Abstract

Overview

Exploring the notion of the digital home reveals a paradox: although at the centre of the plans being announced by consumer electronics and computer manufacturers, portals and Internet service providers, the ways that consumers are currently taking advantage of portability and content transfer and exchange possibilities are in many respects more advanced than the available operational solutions.

Manufacturers are developing approaches based chiefly on their core business, organised around a flagship device or a home network. But the complexity of consumption scenarios is gradually driving more decentralised, more user-centric solutions, combining local storage and online access.

In this still somewhat hazy context, although the lines of rivalry and cooperation between the players involved are beginning to be drawn, it is not even certain what stakes the digital home represents:

• Is it a form of leverage, to spur the sale of equipment and services?
• Is it a necessary condition for the development of a secure content market?
• Can it be a profit centre in and of itself?

Key questions

• Are evolving consumption patterns enabling the development of the digital home?
• What are the digital home' s key components?
• What positions are the different players taking - equipment manufacturers,
• ISPs, software house, telcos, Internet companies - and how are they evolving?
• What factors are critical to the digital home' s development (usage, technologies)?
• What home network solutions are most likely to take hold?

Who should read this report?

Internet companies

• Understand operators' positioning and strategy with respect to services
• Assess the development of rival solutions, notably in partnership with telcos

Telcos (fixed and mobile)

• Understand Internet players' overall strategy
• Analyse the consumer electronics and computer approaches

Equipment manufacturers (consumer devices)

• Understand network operators' and Internet companies' digital home market strategies
• Evaluate the digital home market' s potential Investors and analysts
• Analyse the overall state of competition in the digital home market
• Identify the business models

Players

• Acer
• Apple*
• Archos*
• BT
• Deutsche Telekom
• France Telecom*
• Free*
• Freevo*
• Fujitsu*
• Google
• GPBVR*
• Home Gateway initiative*
• HP*
• Legrand*
• Microsoft*
• Motorola
• Nintendo Wii*
• Nokia
• Pace micro*
• Philips*
• Real
• Samsung
• Siemens*
• Sky*
• Sony*
• Sony Ericsson
• Thomson*
• TiVo
• Toshiba
• Vodafone
• Yahoo*

*detailed analysis provided