Investor's Business Daily

While Netgear focuses on businesses, storage for the home networking market has a great outlook, says Kurt Scherf, an analyst at Parks Associates.

Scherf sees annual purchases for home networking storage devices roughly doubling from 2007 to 2010, as more people want to access digital photos, movies or other content.

"Storage is at the heart of the home," Scherf said. "It's got an important role to play."

From the article "Netgear Acquisition Steers Storage Push," by ...read more

Hearst plans to run 10- and 15-second "pre-roll," or TV-like, ads before each video.

Such ads are catching the eye of advertisers that want to find ways to reach the online audience.

Hearst wants to get in on the ground floor, says Michael Cai, an analyst for research firm Parks Associates.

"More content owners are taking a look at this and trying to figure out how to get a bigger piece of the pie," Cai said.

Video ad revenue in the U.S. will rise to $4 billion i ...read more

The latest trend is incorporating social networking and blogging services into cell phones, says John Barrett, an analyst with Parks Associates. Examples include Cingular Wireless' deal with MySpace, a unit of News Corp., (NWS) and Verizon Wireless' deal with YouTube.

Handset makers and cellular service providers will attend in force, touting new offerings, Barrett says.

From the article "Show Is Electronics, But It's Disney, CBS That Get Star Billing," by Patrick Seitz.

"AT&T is on the leading edge of what will be a big play," said Bill Ablondi, an analyst with Parks Associates, a research firm that focuses on the digital-living market. "There are a number of players lining up at the gate. We're going to see a lot of it after the first of the year."

Companies that are most interested in offering services like this are traditional security companies, garage-door opener makers and cable and TV companies that already have infrastructure in pla ...read more

According to Nielsen/NetRatings, MySpace saw its number of unique visitors in April skyrocket by 367% vs. April 2005 to 38.4 million visitors. That's vs. average growth of 47% for the 10 most-visited social networking Web sites, a group that is led by MySpace. "This is just the tip of the iceberg of what you're going to see" in growth of fee-based content at MySpace, said Nielsen's Gerbrandt.

Producers of movies and TV shows are moving onto the Web aggressively.

"I suspe ...read more

"AOL had the upper hand on who it wanted to partner with," said Harry Wang, research analyst at Parks Associates.

From the article "Google Negotiating For 5% AOL Stake; Microsoft Left Out," by Brian Deagon.

Apple, which is switching to Intel chips by mid-2006, came out with its first media center-type PC in October. The new iMac G5 features the Front Row media experience. Front Row gives users a simple and intuitive way to play music and photo slide shows, watch DVDs and downloaded videos on their iMac from up to 30 feet away with the bundled Apple Remote.

"They're going to make a big play for the living room," said John Barrett, director of research at Parks Associates.

Ap ...read more

Parks Associates says 40 million U.S. households will have speedy Internet access at the end of 2005. That's key, because VoIP service requires broadband hookups.

And 24 million U.S. households will have home networks, mostly wireless, by the end of this year, Parks Associates says.

VoIP's emergence poses a threat to big local phone companies. In the mid-1990s, some PC owners used VoIP software to make cheap international calls. New startups, led by Skype, have taken PC- ...read more