Despite intensifying concerns about declining DVD sales, boxoffice receipts and advertiser spending, traditional media executives attending Herbert Allen's exclusive Sun Valley summit this month didn't exactly flock to the so-called new media moguls, whose emerging venues could be critical in offsetting the industry's mounting economic risks. That uniform observation from elite executive conference attendees begs the question: "Why not?" When presented with the opportunity to aggressively explore viable new alternatives to their challenged business models, why didn't traditional media players respond as if their existence depends on it, as suggested by a recent flood of troubling statistics? "There was almost no interaction between traditional media companies and new media companies," one high-level Sun Valley conference attendee says. "Google was talking about video search and Intel talked about WiMax, and all the new media companies were talking about changing the existing business models. The traditional media companies sat there and listened to them with their heads in the sand, like it's business as usual," another conference attendee says. "It was really bizarre."
The industrial sector is on the eve of a wireless transformation, driven by an urgent demand for greater network capacity, reliability, and deterministic performance. Historically, manufacturers and mission-critical operations have relied on wired networks — favoring their predictability — because spectrum congestion in legacy 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands limited confidence in wireless for operational technology (OT) environments. However, with the introduction and rapid adoption of the 6GHz spectrum, compounded by significant advances in Wi-Fi standards, industrial facilities are now poised to embrace wireless LANs as the backbone for automation and digital innovation. Industrial WLAN Market Development Recent research from ABI Research forecasts that over 70 percent of industrial-grade wireless LAN access points (WLAN APs) shipped in 2030 will support the 6GHz band. This is a leap from 2 percent in 2023, highlighting a rapid and profound technological shift. The market for ruggedized indust...