The emerging market for residential gateways (RGs) will more than triple over the next five years, growing from sales of 8.6 million units in 2001 to more than 33 million units in 2005, according to Parks Associates, a Dallas-based market research firm specializing in emerging technologies and services for the home.
Driven primarily by the demand for broadband Internet and high-definition entertainment services and recent advances in home networking technology, the cumulative value of the RG market is expected to approach $3 billion by 2005.
According to The Residential Gateway Report: Third Edition, the U.S. market for residential gateways will also witness the deployment of new forms of RGs. These devices will incorporate a variety of different features and formats, ranging from set-top boxes to whole-house RGs.
“The early market for residential gateways suffered from the absence of both sufficient home networking technologies and consumer demand,” says Michael Greeson, Parks Associates analyst. “Today, however, the technologies most essential to the development of more functional and less expensive residential gateways — including advances in semiconductor design such as system-on-a-chip solutions — will soon be readily available.”
