Info Appliances To Hit $2.2B - Handhelds Hot Says IDC
NewsBytes - October 22, 1998: 7:11 p.m. ET
FRAMINGHAM, MASSACHUSETTS, U.S.A. (NB) -- In an info
appliance arena projected to climb to $2.2 billion in revenues this
year, NetTV, Internet-smart handhelds, and gaming devices are some of
the hottest products around, whereas Internet toasters and consumer
NCs (network computers) are "not so hot," said an IDC analyst.
In a press telebriefing today, Sean Kaldor, IDC's VP of consumer
devices research, predicted that unit shipments and "activations" of
information appliances will nearly double from 3 million units in
1997 to 5.9 million in 1998, subsequently skyrocketing to 55.7
million units by 2002.
With the term "activation," IDC is referring to post-shipment
distribution of software to activate capabilities like interactivity,
Kaldor noted.
In the blossoming new appliance space, he continued,
Internet-smart handhelds such as PalmPilots and WinCE devices
constitute the single hottest category, with a 33 percent market share.
The handhelds are typically priced in the $500 to $1,000 range.
Gaming devices such as Dreamcast, on the other hand, currently
comprise only 14 percent of the appliance market. But with the
emergence of new entries from players like Sony, IDC predicts
gaming products will move to second place by the year 2002.
Also by 2002, non-PCs will represent 36 percent of all info
appliances sold, the reporters were told during the telebriefing today.
And by the year 2010, info appliances will become truly "mass
market" items, with the integration of basic set-top box features
directly into NetTV products available in retail stores, according to the
analyst.
Kaldor equated the future growth path for info appliances to the
picture already painted by radios. As holds true for PCs today, most
US households had only one radio in days gone by.
In the future, however, houses will contain multiple PC and
non-PC devices, located in various rooms, but all "sharing the same
content."
Some types of info appliances are "not so hot" at the moment,
though. Dedicated devices such as Internet toasters and recipe
machines, much talked about a couple of years ago, have yet to make
much headway, the analyst observed.
Consumer NC clients have not achieved the same success rate at
their corporate enterprise counterparts.
And the screen phone market is "still hot, but cooling," Kaldor
remarked. Some vendors have been focusing on products that are
"too general, high-end, and expensive," he added. For display
purposes, "the NetTV will win" over the screen phone, due to its
larger and better screen.
But the analyst also acknowledged strong exceptions in the screen
phone space, including a $99 device from Casio with an e-mail link.
IDC is located at idc.com on the World Wide Web.
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