Home Media Servers Take Center Stage In The Home
The global market for Home Media Servers is growing and growing fast, in the next five years (2013-2018) it is estimated to worth approximately US$141.3 Billion. This is according to a report done by GIA titled “Home Media Servers: A Global Strategic Business Report”. They have found that we are spending more to entertain ourselves at home and the growth in digital content is forcing us to centralise content storage and management.
Home Media Servers: A Global Strategic Business Report
The desire to find newer ways of entertainment has been steadily expanding the boundaries of a wide array of technologies including home entertainment. While digitalization of entertainment content paved the way for the increase in number of digital audio/video files, the introduction of compression technologies such as MP3 & MP4 facilitated storage of huge volumes of entertainment content on a single computer, thereby eliminating the need for audio & video cassettes or CDs for storage. Accessing, storing and sharing digital media content has also undergone a sea change with the growing household penetration of high-end laptops, smart TVs and sound systems, all capable of playing multimedia files and connecting to a home network.
Media Sharing involves copying digital entertainment content from multiple storage devices at home onto a single computer and syncing it with other devices in a network or streaming it to other connected consumer entertainment systems over home networks. However, computer hard disks are vulnerable against crashes, which can result in permanent loss of all entertainment files.
Synchronizing media files across multiple devices without overlaps is difficult to achieve. This brings into spotlight home media servers, which act as a centralized storage hub for digital media data and also enables users to share/stream the stored content to multiple consumer electronic devices connected to a home network.
A significant trend driving the market is the growing proliferation of digital media devices being used at home and the increase in volume of digital content captured and accessed. Penetration of multiple storage mediums, including computer hard disks, external hard disks, flash drives, MP3 players, DVDs, Blu-Ray Discs, CDs and SD Cards at home is especially driving the surge in volume of digital content at home.
The rapid proliferation of mobile phones, digital cameras and camcorders are also adding to the growth in digital media content in households. For instance, Internet enabled devices such as smartphones and tablet PCs, which lets users download entertainment content such as songs, videos and pictures, contribute significantly to volume of entertainment content generated. With entertainment content scattered across multiple devices, the need for centralized storage and backup generates demand for home media servers. These servers help users save digital media on a central location thus eliminating the need for maintaining multiple storage devices, thus reducing the clutter. Media Servers also proactively enable people to organize and manage their media files in simple way.
Traditionally, multimedia PCs have been the primary storage choice for media content. Currently, a broad range of dedicated product offerings capable of serving as media servers is available in the market including network-attached storage units, set-top boxes, and video game consoles. Armed with media server software that can help them store digital media content and stream data to connected devices in a home network, these devices are driving growth in the home media server market.
Set-Top Box Media Servers in particular, have been gaining significant traction with telecom companies aggressively leveraging them to gain competitive advantage in the television services market. With competition heating up in the television services market, telecom companies have been offering advanced Set-Top Boxes (STBs) with DVR (Digital Video Recorder) functionality and media server capabilities such as integrated hard-drives for storing digital media and streaming content to other client devices such as connected televisions and other media players at home over home network. NAS devices are also increasingly being preferred as home media servers driven by its exceptional storage capacity.
As stated by the new market research report on Home Media Servers, the US represents the largest market worldwide. Asia-Pacific is forecast to emerge as the fastest growing market with a projected CAGR of 34.6% over the analysis period led by China and India. Key factors driving growth in this region include huge population; rising disposable incomes; growing consumer affluence; adoption of high-end electronics such as smartphones, notebooks; increasing broadband Internet subscriptions; and surging deployment of home networks.
Major players in the market include Apple Inc., Autonomic Controls, Inc., Axentra Corporation, Boxee Inc., CyberLink Corporation, DISH Network Corporation, Kaleidescape Inc., Logitech International S.A., Microsoft Corporation, NETGEAR Inc., Panasonic Corporation, Roku Inc., Sling Media Inc., Sony Corporation, Synology Inc., TiVo Inc., VidaBox LLC, Vizio Inc., and Western Digital Corporation, among others.
The research report titled “Home Media Servers: A Global Strategic Business Report” announced by Global Industry Analysts Inc., provides a comprehensive review of market trends, company profiles, mergers, acquisitions and other strategic industry activities. The report provides market estimates and projections in US$ Million for all major geographic markets including the US, Canada, Japan, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Rest of World.
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