Wireless Chipsets Make Inroads into Homes

Even though chip manufacturers are seeing one of the grimmest years ever, Allied Business Intelligence says that the home networking silicon market will represent one of the fastest growth IC markets over the next few years. ABI forecasts that worldwide revenues from wireless, powerline, and phoneline home networking chips should grow from $49 million in 2000 to $887 million by 2006. Wireless ICs will be at the forefront of the invasion, and could account for 48% of home networking chipsets shipped by 2006. ABI's report, called Home Networking Chipsets: Wireless, Powerline and Phoneline IC Markets , also says that wireless local area network (WLAN) ICs are seeing dramatic price declines due to increasing chip integration and a ramp up in shipments. IEEE 802.11b, and to a lesser extent HomeRF chipsets, will show promising market penetration over the next few years, with 5 GHz WLAN technologies such as 802.11a and HiperLAN2, enabling multimedia home networking applications. The study also says that interest in the powerline IC market is peaking now. With the HomePlug 1.0 specification ratified in June 2001, powerline chipsets should be coming out in force in the second half of 2001. If you're interested in getting ahold of the report, check out ABI's web site .