This year I stumbled on the true meaning of twelfth night. It's not to do with when the decorations ought to be down, or even the arrival of the three kings. Instead it's all about how long my Christmas wish list is valid for - since January 6th marks the opening of the huge CES Consumer Electronics Association show in Las Vegas. This is where we get the first look at the products which will make our 2004 objects of desire seem obsolete, and start laying the foundations for our 2005 Christmas list.
In amongst the 67 inch TVs and mobile-phone controlled combination fridge/ovens (I kid you not), it was home networking that appeared to be the dominant trend. Whether it was streaming TV round the house, networked storage centers, wireless cameras, or home control systems there were enough new products to fill the average geek's house several times over.
The key question is whether home networking is about to become a mass market. To answer this we can look to both published data and personal observation. The initial driver for home networking has tended to be linking two PCs together (although today its as much about sharing the broadband connection). While PC penetration in the UK is hovering around the 50%, the number of households with more than one PC is growing steadily. In countries around the saturation point of 65% - 70% PC penetration (such as South Korea, and Australia), the number of households with more than one PC is now around 25 – 30% and increasing. Games consoles with broadband capability are also adding to the push to network the home. Then there's the trend for distributing music, pictures, and even video files around the house – principally to the TV or hi-fi – meaning that even single PC households can now justify a home network.
What of personal experience? The key barometer for me has been the number of wireless links that I can see from my house. A year ago there was just my network. Then about 7 months ago another network started registering. Now I reckon I can see about half-a-dozen wireless networks, and this in a road full of lawyers, academics and arty types, not computer nerds.
All the big technology companies also have the home network firmly on their radar. Apple is expected to announce their new Q88 “cheap Mac” at MacWorld Expo this week. With the iPod and iTunes Apple has shown that it can deliver the type of integrated systems that users want, and could be well placed to deliver a user-friendly connected home. Microsoft's own offering, XP Media Centre, has suffered from a slow start due to restrictions on licensing, expensive base systems and a few technical shortcomings, but looks superb and appears to work well.
So will 2005 be the year that home networking goes mainstream? Broadband really pushed forward in 2004 (even my parents got it), and by the end of 2005 nearly 1 in 3 households are expected to have a broadband connection. Home computing devices are getting cheaper, and we'll need more products like the Q88, and different form-factors like tablet PCs that change how you use computers in the house. And of course we'll need systems which are reliable, secure, easy to use, and integrated. I might be prepared to troubleshoot my network every time the tablet or media-adaptor loses its network connection, but Joe and Joanna mass-consumer won't. What they want are consumer strength IT products, not industry strength ones.
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