While there's still some competitive battles among powerline communications standards -- such as HD-PLC and UPA -- HomePlug has emerged as the victorious market leader for powerline home networking solutions.
In addition to being the leader in the sector, the HomePlug Alliance has also signed liaison agreements with the Multimedia Over Coax Alliance (MoCA), the Wi-Fi Alliance, and the ZigBee Alliance to promote cooperation and interoperability in home networking.
That truce, and the resulting cooperation, should benefit both CE manufacturers and consumers. According to the latest market study by In-Stat, HomePlug node shipments will surpass 30 million units by 2014.
"HomePlug products are expected to maintain their lead and continue to grow considerably over the next five years. We expect the European region to remain the main target market for HomePlug products, though Asia Pacific will see the highest growth rate over the next 5 years," says Vahid Dejwakh, Analyst at In-Stat.
The first HomePlug consumer electronics (CE) devices will appear around late 2013 in both North America and Europe, and will grow considerably in the European market. This will be a HomePlug celebration and a key milestone in the development of powerline communications technology.
In-Stat's latest market study findings include:
- Worldwide, over 40 million wired home networking nodes shipped in 2010.
- HomePlug node shipments currently represent 50 percent of all nodes shipped.
- The main providers of networking nodes for this market are Atheros, Entropic, Sigma Designs, and Broadcom.
- G.hn will replace HPNA and then overtake MoCA by end of year 2015.
- HomePlug dominates router/gateway home networking units throughout the forecast period. The same cannot be said for set-top boxes, which will be dominated by MoCA. However, G.hn will make impressive gains in set-top boxes, becoming the second most popular standard by 2013 and challenging MoCA by 2015.
