Intamac wins prestigious European Business Awards

Intamac wins prestigious European Business Awards -

Business Innovation of the Year, 2008 …plus two Ruban d’Honneur’s Ribbons…

Intamac Systems, the specialists in home and security monitoring solutions has won the European Business Awards - ‘Business Innovation of the Year Award’. It also received two Ruban d’Honneurs ribbons, for Business Innovation and Entrepreneur of the Year. The award ceremony was held in Paris on 11 March 2008.

The European Business Awards was set up to recognise and reward excellence, best practice and innovation in companies across the 27 EU member states. It serves to showcase Europe’s most successful business achievements.

Intamac have utilised the World Wide Web to revolutionise the capabilities and reduce the cost of home monitoring and security systems. The Intamac solution offers a unique combination of innovative technology, practical purpose and ease of use. In light of this, the company has already secured major contracts with large international players, including BT, and Australia and New Zealand’s largest general insurer, IAG. Intamac’s technology has also been adopted in a number of high street products by companies such as Linksys and Yale.

European Business Awards CEO Adrian Tripp said, “Intamac has the potential to completely shakeup the traditional home security industry. It is providing some very strong businesses not presently in the home security market with excellent new technologies and business models to challenge the existing players.” Intamac was selected over a shortlist of ten International businesses such as British Telecom, Deutsche Post and Daimler AG.

Intamac’s CEO and founder, Kevin Meagher commented, “We are delighted to win the Business Innovation of the Year Award. It demonstrates that our work in providing innovative monitoring solutions at an affordable price is being recognised outside the UK. We are an Innovation led company, which is constantly driving for growth and has a strong customer focus. We are honored to have won this renowned award against such strong global competition”.

Intamac’s services are currently available through global partners such as Cisco, BT, Yale and IAG, and through leading retailers such as Homebase and PC World or by visiting http://www.intamac.com/

Choice of Storage Media for Multimedia Players

by Harry Wang, Sr. Analyst, Parks Associates

Unlike in the digital audio player market, the fight between NAND flash and hard-disk drive (HDD) on the PMP platform is far from over. The 1.8-inch HDD still has a firm grip on the PMP category that requires storage capacity of 20 Gigabyte or higher due to the cost per byte advantage over NAND flash. Our consumer survey indicated that among PMP owners, hard drive-powered devices still account for a slight majority of the ownership. On the other hand, the micro-drive segment (1-inch or the 0.85-inch HDD), which features a capacity ranging between 4-12 GB, has been hit hard by the NAND flash as its cost-per-byte lead—which it enjoyed during 2003-2005—has dissipated, and NAND flash’s merits (durability, low power consumption, and light-weight) earn it the preferred status for the low storage PMP category.

1.8-inch HDD makers, mainly Toshiba, Hitachi, Seagate, and newcomer Samsung, are fully aware of the threat the NAND flash is posing to their HDD business for portable CE market. Therefore, their battle strategies include:

1) Maintain the cost advantage by enhancing capacity at the same cost. In September 2007, Toshiba launched two new 1.8-inch HDD models: one with 80 GB storage using a single platter, and the other doubling the capacity using two platters. Samsung made a similar announcement two weeks earlier.

2) Dress up the HDD with features that make it slimmer, more energy efficient, and more durable. For instance, the 60GB, 1.8-inch HDD from Samsung or Seagate is measured at only 5mm (0.2-inch) thin. The latest Toshiba 160GB model consumes 0.32 watt of power in idle condition, compared with the 1.5-watts industry average. And Seagate has long been touting its G-force technology, an anti-shock feature that protects the drive by moving the heads off the platter when the device is powered off, thus during a drop, no parts make contact with the media inside the drive. All of these features are aimed at keeping HDD as a viable option for portable device manufacturers.

3) Support CE-ATA, a portable CE-friendly storage interface. The new interface standard replaces the Serial ATA, an interface well-suited for mainstream computing applications that emphasize faster data transfer rates but care less about power consumption. CE-ATA, on the other hand, addresses well the key challenges of a PMP design: cost-effective integration and maximum power efficiency. The CE-ATA Specification 1.0 was finalized in March 2005. Since then, Hitachi has been a strong promoter of the new standard; Seagate has also conformed to the standard in its latest 1.8-inch HDD models. But Toshiba and Samsung support both the CE-ATA and the legacy PATA interfaces on their 1.8-inch drives.

On the other side of the aisle, flash memory manufacturers are gearing up their production capacity and re-drawing the roadmap to further challenge the HDD’s role in the market for portable entertainment devices. According to the theory first publicized in 2002 by Dr. Chang Gyu Hwang, president and CEO of Samsung Electronics’ Semiconductor division, flash can double its density growth every 12 months. Like the famous Moore’s Law, the prediction has worked out quite well over the last five years as NAND flash storage capacity grew from 256 MB in 2002 to 16 GB in 2007. Apple has already incorporated the 16GB NAND flash in its latest iPod Nano models. If the theory continues to hold, the next milestone will be 32 GB in early 2008. It will be just a matter of time before the manufacturers to ramp up production and bring the cost down to a market-acceptable level. Samsung debut the world’s first 32GB flash card in September 2006, followed by SanDisk in January 2007. And in early 2008, Apple released its latest iPod Touch with 32GB flash memory—just what we have predicted for this capacity flash memory to go mainstream.. Looking ahead, flash is expected to reach 60GB or higher during the 2009-2010 timeframe, at which point it will begin to take away the medium-storage PMP market share from the 1.8-inch HDD manufacturers. Companies that do not have assets in the flash business have come to grips with such a trend. Seagate, for instance, has not only produced hybrid drives mixing both flash and HDD, but also announced plan in September 2007 to make flash-based, solid-state disks from 2008, a measure to hedge its bets in the consumer electronic market, in our analysis.

This article was published for the 2008 CONNECTIONS™ Conference Industry Insights, the official publication of CONNECTIONS™.

Speakers Announced for MoCA's Super Session: Entertaining Home Connectivity

This panel shares their experiences and prognostications and entertains questions from the audience regarding the consumer environment for HD video distribution in and around the home. Confirmed participants include:

Mike Ehlenberger, VP, North America Channel Sales, Actiontec
David Henry, Sr. Director, Product Marketing, Home Products, NETGEAR
Daniel Wong, Director, Product Management, D-Link
Dean Takahashi, Lead Writer, Digital Media, VentureBeat
Ryan Tykwinski, Director, Home Entertainment Experience, Best Buy

This session will be moderated by:
Rob Gelphman, Chair, Marketing Work Group, MoCA

Triggers & Inhibitors for CE Purchases

New research from Parks Associates examines the decision-making process of today's consumers and key factors that trigger or inhibit purchasing. Price isn't the only important factor, especially as people buy more fun, high-tech devices such as gaming consoles, HD DVD players, photo printers, etc.

The Changing Consumer Electronics Purchase Process survey provides greater definition and measurement of purchase intentions as well as key barriers to technology adoption. The analysis measures the impact of information resources and word-of-mouth endorsements, explains the research and evaluation steps for a product purchase, and links the purchase decision steps into an evaluative metric that identifies critical steps.

Results of the survey will be highlighted at the CONNECTIONS Conference and CONNECTIONS Europe Summit Series.

Panelists from Best Buy, NETGEAR, D-Link, Actiontec, VentureBeat to discuss entertainment networking in special MoCA™ session at CONNECTIONS™

MoCA’s super session, “Entertaining Home Connectivity,” will feature panelists from leading CE vendors NETGEAR, D-Link, and Actiontec Electronics and the number-one retailer Best Buy as well as Dean Takahashi, lead writer for digital media at VentureBeat, a blog on venture capital and start-ups. These experts in retail and consumer electronics will share their experiences and predictions for the entertainment networking market. They will also take questions from the audience regarding the consumer environment for HD video distribution in and around the home.

“In-store purchases accounted for two-thirds of home networking purchases made in 2007,” said Kurt Scherf, vice president, principal analyst, Parks Associates. “With about one-third of U.S. households now with a network, the critical next stage will include upgrades and enhancements. How well the retail channel educates consumers and showcases connected home solutions will be a critical component of the success of next-generation home networking solutions.”