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Wired and wireless technologies
adopted
June 26, 2007
Among the several home networking technologies available today, Wi-Fi,
powerline communication (PLC) and Bluetooth are adopted by many makers across South Korea, Taiwan and mainland China. Suppliers
are also looking to adopt ZigBee and Ultra-Wideband (UWB) for their equipment and devices.
Wi-Fi is the dominant
wireless technology in new releases from South Korea. For personal area networks (PAN), which include short-range connections
across PDAs, headsets, keyboards, speakers and printers, Bluetooth Class 1 is applied. For connections across A/V devices,
South Korea makers embed UWB chipsets. For some PC peripherals, HomeRF chipsets at 10Mbps are adopted.
Taiwan makers
categorize home networking products based on whether or not they support TCP/IP. Supply and product development currently
stress TCP/IP-based products, although plans are afoot to develop the segment for non-TCP/IP based home networking products.
Taiwan makers export PLC devices, whose market has been thriving from declining equipment prices, infrastructure
buildout and availability of applications. Nonetheless, makers said that products based on ZigBee and UWB could rise in the
coming months.
Mainland China has been focusing on Wi-Fi-based products, with a few suppliers exploring the powerline
sector. Makers offer wired and wireless products.
As of 2006, the home network industry in South Korea has grown
to $1.98 billion, according to the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI). Home network equipment accounted
for 87 percent of the estimated industry value, with home network services taking up the rest. The South Korea supplier base
divides home networking equipment into four major product categories: home aggregators, home servers, home nodes and chipsets.
The home aggregator category includes access points (APs), routers, gateways and switches. The home server category
comprises media center PCs and set-top boxes including IP, cable terrestrial and satellite set-top boxes. Home A/V devices,
bidirectional TVs, home automation equipment, security sensors, healthcare systems and related devices are included in the
home node category. The networking chipset category refers to the components that enable wired and/or wireless networking.
The chipsets embedded in South Korea home networking products support wired technologies such as Ethernet, HomePNA, powerline,
FireWire and Multimedia over Coax Alliance (MoCA), and wireless technologies such as Wi-Fi, UWB, Z-Wave, Bluetooth and ZigBee.
Source: Computer Products
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