How things are changing. The 12th annual report of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) says mobile handsets are poised to take over from personal computers as the primary mechanism driving the music download industry. Apparently the increasing popularity and availability of 3G means that handset downloads will overtake PC downloads before the end of this year. The report chimes with the stance taken by most mobile operators. They have been claiming that this Christmas will at last be the time of the 3G boom. However, many of them also predicted that for last year and the year before and look what happened -- zilch. Last year the global music download market was worth about $500 million to the record industry and the that was split 50:50 between tracks taken from the Internet via PCs and those downloaded to 2.5G and 3G handsets. This year though, the balance will swing to mobiles. The arithmetic is simple. More people in more countries around the world own more mobile handsets than they do PCs, Internet connections and digital music players. Indeed the ratio in western Europe and parts of the Far East is 9 to 1.
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...