Multimedia networking will drive the home networking semiconductor market over the next five years, as revenues grow 12% per year to reach over $2.3 billion in 2008, according to In-Stat/MDR. The high-tech market research firm reports that this growth will come despite decreasing per unit prices.
Entertainment servers in the home will also drive the demand for network-oriented media processing engines, which In-Stat/MDR believes will be a $700 million market by 2008. Ethernet and wireless LAN will represent the lion?s share of the PHY market, accounting for over 90% of all physical layer connections shipped in 2008. Residential gateways and other home networking devices will help drive the communications processor market, as this overall segment of the market hits $338 million by the end of the forecast. Multi-room PVR and other entertainment networking applications will boost both coax (MoCA) and powerline networking (HomePlug AV) to over 23 million connections shipped in 2008.