According to a new report by Juniper Research, Cisco will be the undisputed leader in both the Enterprise VoIP Access Point market and the VoIP WLAN Switch/Mobility Controller market in the next few years. Juniper estimates the total market to be worth around $2bn this year growing to $15bn in 2012.

Report Author, Basharat Hamid Ashai said that "Cisco has a worldwide market presence and huge resources that makes it difficult for any other vendor to take market share. Other vendors such as Aruba Networks, Trapeze Networks, Proxim Wireless and Meru Networks are poised to face stiff competition, not being able to maintain a lead for more than two or three consecutive years. However, these companies are growing at a good pace and are almost on a par with each other in terms of the success in this sector".

VoIP Access Points

VoIP Access Points for enterprises are expected to reach over $5bn in revenues by 2012, growing from $930m this year. North American revenues are expected to grow from $442m in 2007 to $1.75bn in 2012. EMEA and Asia Pacific revenues are expected to reach $1.7bn and $1.6bn respectively by 2012.

VoIP WLAN Switch/Mobility Controllers

VoIP WLAN Switch/ Mobility Controllers for enterprises are expected to reach almost $8bn by 2012, growing from just under $1bn in 2007. North American revenues are expected to grow from around a $0.5bn in 2007 to $2.7bn in 2012 with EMEA and Asia Pac revenues reaching $2.7bn and $1.4bn respectively by 2012.

VoIP over Wi-Fi handsets (single mode) are predicted to ship $155m worth in 2007 increasing to $1.5bn by 2012. North American revenues are to grow from $93m this year to $600m in 2012. EMEA and Asia Pac are expected to touch $480m and $324m respectively by 2012. The report found that Spectralink (acquired by Polycom) is expected to lead the single mode VoIP over Wi-Fi handset market for the coming few years aided by its powerful OEM relationships with Avaya, Inter-Tel, NEC, Alcatel and Nortel.

The convergence of pharmaceuticals, biological products, and medical devices in combination products such as drug-coated or advanced delivery devices is a large and growing trend. According to Navigant Consulting, the combination product market is set to grow 10 percent per year, reaching nearly $9.54 billion by 2009.

Wi-Fi chipset sales are poised to exceed 200 million units in 2006, according to new data released by In-Stat and the Wi-Fi Alliance, thanks in part to sales of some of the hottest holiday gifts for 2006. The prevalence of Wi-Fi technology in everything from notebook computers to cell phones to gaming devices has propelled worldwide sales forward again this year. Continued proliferation into phones and consumer electronics is expected to lead Wi-Fi unit sales growth to the half-billion mark by 2009.

The U.S. packaging market is currently the largest and most stable market for packaging products globally, and is expected to experience growth of 3% annually. The market is generally unaffected by economic cycles and grows through product innovation and expansion into geographic markets.

The market also produces a considerable amount of refuse. Because we as consumers use so much packaging for our food and drink, manufacturers of packaging and its contents are conscious of the impact it can have on the environment. Using “sustainable” components, in whole or part, for packaging has become a real opportunity for manufacturers to showcase their awareness of environmental issues, and win points with consumers who are concerned with the impact packaging has on the ecosystem.

The Sustainable (“Green”) Market for Food and Beverage Packaging focuses on the market for sustainable packaging for the food and beverage industry in the United States. SBI defines sustainable packaging as environment friendly/green packaging used in the food and beverage industry (excluding foodservice) and includes the following five packaging material categories.

While consumer electronics today rely largely on physical media and on broadcast delivery of entertainment content, a new study from ABI Research finds the market in the midst of a major shift to a greater reliance on network-based delivery. Wi-Fi networking is expected to become a key enabler for delivery and redistribution of this content in the home, particularly for retail consumer electronics hardware.

ABI Research forecasts that the total number of Wi-Fi-enabled consumer electronics devices will grow from just 40 million shipped in 2006 to nearly 249 million in 2011.

"From the enormous interest in online gaming to the rapid emergence of new Internet distribution channels for top-tier movie and TV content, the need for connectivity in mainstream consumer electronics is growing rapidly," said research director Michael Wolf. "While the consumer Wi-Fi market has previously consisted largely of routers, gateways and adapters, ABI Research believes that as the market evolves towards digital distribution, its growth will be fueled by the inclusion of embedded Wi-Fi in consumer electronics."

The market today is led by portable gaming consoles, as both Nintendo and Sony have equipped their latest generation devices with Wi-Fi for multiplayer and online gaming. The new Zune from Microsoft signals the beginning of a large scale movement towards embedded Wi-Fi in portable media players, while camera vendors such as Nikon, Kodak and Canon have all embraced Wi-Fi in their products. Line-powered devices such as gaming consoles, DVD players and audio receivers are all expected to see high attach rates for Wi-Fi during the forecast period.

Senior analyst Philip Solis adds, "The development of a market for Wi-Fi-enabled consumer electronics has been hampered by technology limitations such as power consumption, but it has also been delayed by consumer electronics vendors' hesitation as they waited to see what would happen with 802.11n. With the 802.11n standard set to be ratified in a little over a year, the Wi-Fi Alliance's decision to certify solutions based on a draft 2.0 for 802.11n, and vendors' intentions to release products based on the current Wi-Fi protocols, this market is set for growth."

The new study, Wi-Fi in Consumer Electronics, is a comprehensive analysis of the emerging market for embedded Wi-Fi in consumer electronics. It examines the device categories for consumer electronics, identifies the key system and Wi-Fi IC providers competing in the market, and features extensive forecasts for Wi-Fi in consumers electronics by protocol and IC level.

http://www.abiresearch.com/

Thanks to nanotechnology, tomorrow’s food will be designed by shaping molecules and atoms. Food will be wrapped in “smart” safety packaging that can detect spoilage or harmful contaminants. Future products will enhance and adjust their color, flavor, or nutrient content to accommodate each consumer’s taste or health needs. And in agriculture, nanotechnology promises to reduce pesticide use, improve plant and animal breeding, and create new nano-bioindustrial products.

The Helmut Kaiser Consultancy estimates that the nanotech food market is growing rapidly and will reach over $20 billion by 2010—about three times its current size. A recent study by Cientifica found over 150 nanotechnology applications in the food industry at present, with some of the world’s biggest companies—like Altria, Nestle, Kraft, Heinz and Unilever—involved in nanotechnology research and development.

The U.S. government is investing in nanotech agrifood as a part of its annual $1.2 billion nanotechnology research budget. A new report, Nanotechnology in Agriculture and Food Production: Anticipated Applications, for the first time analyzes the publicly available data on federally funded research projects in agrifood nanotechnology, supplemented with data from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Written by Jennifer Kuzma and Peter VerHage from the University of Minnesota’s Center for Science, Technology, and Public Policy, the report estimates possible areas and timeframes for future nanotechnology-based food and agriculture applications. It takes an early look at potential benefits and risks, and it explores possible areas and needs for environmental, health and safety oversight. Their work also resulted in creation of a searchable, online database with over 160 research projects available at: http://www.nanotechproject.org/50.

Today’s nanotech food products include a new variety of canola oil containing tiny materials that can block cholesterol from entering the bloodstream, and a chocolate milkshake that supposedly tastes better and is more nutritious than conventional shakes—thanks to the unusual properties of a new ingredient that is 100,000 smaller than a grain of sand. Nanoscale droplets of a new substance have been added to pesticides so that formulations that once had to be shaken every two hours to prevent ingredients from separating now hold together for up to one year.

“The number of nanotechnology food products currently being sold appears to be relatively small,” said David Rejeski, director of the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies, which supported this study. “But with millions of dollars being spent globally by both government and industry to apply nanotechnologies in areas such as food processing, food safety and packaging, and agricultural production, it is the right time to start asking a number of related questions: What nano-engineered food products will appear on the market over the next year or two? What are the potential benefits and risks? Who will be affected? And how can consumers become engaged early on?”

“The goal of this report is to look upstream in order to develop an early understanding about what is on the nano agrifood horizon,” said Dr. Kuzma. “In its current form, the report and data only scratches the surface of potential applications. Nonetheless, it is sufficiently informative to serve as a starting point for a more in-depth dialogue among consumers, business, and government about the near-and long-term uses of and safeguards for nanotechnology in food and agriculture. Particularly, it provides an early guidepost to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Environmental Protection Agency, and Food & Drug Administration.”

“If nanotechnology is to succeed, we must have an open policy discussion that is informed by a clear understanding of how products are moving from laboratories and farms to factories and stores, and into people’s kitchens and environment. The Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies is committed to helping facilitate the necessary analysis and risk research around nanotechnology agrifood to provide practical and sound policy choices,” according to Project Director Rejeski. The Project is an initiative of the Woodrow Wilson Center and The Pew Charitable Trusts.

Nanotechnology is the ability to measure, see, manipulate and manufacture things usually between 1 and 100 nanometers. A nanometer is one billionth of a meter; a human hair is roughly 100,000 nanometers wide. The National Science Foundation predicts that the global market for goods and services using nanotechnologies will grow to $1 trillion by 2015. The U.S. invests approximately $3 billion annually in nanotechnology research and development, which accounts for approximately one-third of the total public and private sector investments worldwide.

Jennifer Kuzma, Ph.D., joined the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs and the Center for Science, Technology and Public Policy (CSTPP) at the University of Minnesota in 2003. Prior to this, she served for four years as program director and senior program officer at the National Academy of Sciences’ National Research Council (NRC). She earned her Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1995 and was subsequently a research fellow at the Rockefeller University in the Laboratory for Plant Molecular Biology. She currently serves as assistant professor at the University of Minnesota and as associate director of the CSTPP.

Peter VerHage graduated from North Park University with degrees in biology and in politics and government in 1999. He completed an M.S. degree in science, technology, and environmental policy at the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute at the University of Minnesota and was a research assistant at CSTPP.

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Summary
This report provides an updated and detailed overview of the Nanotechnology market worldwide. It examines the emerging trends in the industry and provides exclusive forecasts product wise and application wise. It includes the snapshots of different players in the industry, the R&D spending in various countries and studies the patents in this technology.

Key Findings
• Worldwide more than $9.5 billion was spent on Nanotechnology research and development in 2005, which showed a considerable rise as compared to 2004. Out of the total R&D expenditure, major contributions were done from various governments and corporate who together contributed nearly $9 billion. Rest of the R&D spending was from venture capital firms.
• By 2008, the total global demand for nanoscale materials, devices and tools will cross $28 billion.
• The U.S. Nanotechnology market is predicted to reach $3.3 billion by 2008 and cross $19.8 billion by 2013 showing a strong growth.
• The market for textiles using Nanotechnologies will cross US $13 billion mark by 2007. By 2012, the market is expected to reach US $115.2 billion.
• United States has the largest share of global investment in Nanotechnology. The US market had a share of 27% in 2005. Followed by Japanese market with more than 24% of share. The western European market also had a quarter of the market share with major investment in countries like Germany, UK and France. Other countries like China, Russia, South Korea, Canada and Australia hold the rest of the share.

Key Issues Addressed
• The global outlook of Nanotechnology market.
• Analysis of Nanotechnology market by various products and application areas, their market and growth prospects.
• Key drivers, opportunities for growth, and challenges for Nanotechnology.
• An update on the recent developments in Nanotechnology.
• Snapshots of the key players in Nanotechnology.

piribo.com

Gartner, Inc., announced its 2006 Emerging Technologies Hype Cycle which assesses the maturity, impact and adoption speed of 36 key technologies and trends during the next ten years. This year’s hype cycle highlights three major themes that are experiencing significant activity and which include new or heavily hyped technologies, where organisations may be uncertain as to which will have most impact on their business.

The three key technology themes identified by Gartner, and the corresponding technologies for enterprises to examine closely within them, are:

1. Web 2.0

Web 2.0 represents a broad collection of recent trends in Internet technologies and business models. Particular focus has been given to user-created content, lightweight technology, service-based access and shared revenue models. Technologies rated by Gartner as having transformational, high or moderate impact include:

Social Network Analysis (SNA) is rated as high impact (definition: enables new ways of performing vertical applications that will result in significantly increased revenue or cost savings for an enterprise) and capable of reaching maturity in less than two years. SNA is the use of information and knowledge from many people and their personal networks. It involves collecting massive amounts of data from multiple sources, analyzing the data to identify relationships and mining it for new information. Gartner said that SNA can successfully impact a business by being used to identify target markets, create successful project teams and serendipitously identify unvoiced conclusions.

Ajax is also rated as high impact and capable of reaching maturity in less than two years. Ajax is a collection of techniques that Web developers use to deliver an enhanced, more-responsive user experience in the confines of a modern browser (for example, recent version of Internet Explorer, Firefox, Mozilla, Safari or Opera). A narrow-scope use of Ajax can have a limited impact in terms of making a difficult-to-use Web application somewhat less difficult. However, Gartner said, even this limited impact is worth it, and users will appreciate incremental improvements in the usability of applications. High levels of impact and business value can only be achieved when the development process encompasses innovations in usability and reliance on complementary server-side processing (as is done in Google Maps).

Collective intelligence, rated as transformational (definition: enables new ways of doing business across industries that will result in major shifts in industry dynamics) is expected to reach mainstream adoption in five to ten years. Collective intelligence is an approach to producing intellectual content (such as code, documents, indexing and decisions) that results from individuals working together with no centralized authority. This is seen as a more cost-efficient way of producing content, metadata, software and certain services.

Mashup is rated as moderate on the Hype Cycle (definition: provides incremental improvements to established processes that will result in increased revenue or cost savings for an enterprise), but is expected to hit mainstream adoption in less than two years. A "mashup" is a lightweight tactical integration of multi-sourced applications or content into a single offering. Because mashups leverage data and services from public Web sites and Web applications, they’re lightweight in implementation and built with a minimal amount of code. Their primary business benefit is that they can quickly meet tactical needs with reduced development costs and improved user satisfaction. Gartner warns that because they combine data and logic from multiple sources, they’re vulnerable to failures in any one of those sources.

2. Real World Web

Increasingly, real-world objects will not only contain local processing capabilities—due to the falling size and cost of microprocessors—but they will also be able to interact with their surroundings through sensing and networking capabilities. The emergence of this Real World Web will bring the power of the Web, which today is perceived as a "separate" virtual place, to the user's point of need of information or transaction. Technologies rated as having particularly high impact include:

Location-aware technologies should hit maturity in less than two years. Location-aware technology is the use of GPS (global positioning system), assisted GPS (A-GPS), Enhanced Observed Time Difference (EOTD), enhanced GPS (E-GPS), and other technologies in the cellular network and handset to locate a mobile user. Users should evaluate the potential benefits to their business processes of location-enabled products such as personal navigation devices (for example, TomTom or Garmin) or Bluetooth-enabled GPS receivers, as well as WLAN location equipment that may help automate complex processes, such as logistics and maintenance. Whereas the market sees consolidation around a reduced number of high-accuracy technologies, the location service ecosystem will benefit from a number of standardized application interfaces to deploy location services and applications for a wide range of wireless devices.

Location-aware applications will hit mainsteam adoption in the next two to five years. An increasing number of organizations have deployed location-aware mobile business applications, mostly based on GPS-enabled devices, to support queue business processes and activities, such as field force management, fleet management, logistics and good transportation. The market is in an early adoption phase, and Europe is slightly ahead of the United States, due to the higher maturity of mobile networks, their availability and standardization.

Sensor Mesh Networks are ad hoc networks formed by dynamic meshes of peer nodes, each of which includes simple networking, computing and sensing capabilities. Some implementations offer low-power operation and multi-year battery life. Technologically aggressive organizations looking for low-cost sensing and robust self-organizing networks with small data transmission volumes should explore sensor networking. The market is still immature and fragmented, and there are few standards, so suppliers will evolve and equipment could become obsolete relatively rapidly. Therefore, this area should be seen as a tactical investment, as mainstream adoption is not expected for more than ten years.

3. Applications Architecture

The software infrastructure that provides the foundation for modern business applications continues to mirror business requirements more directly. The modularity and agility offered by service oriented architecture at the technology level and business process management at the business level will continue to evolve through high impact shifts such as model-driven and event-driven architectures, and corporate semantic Web. Technologies rated as having particularly high impact include:

Event-driven Architecture (EDA) is an architectural style for distributed applications, in which certain discrete functions are packaged into modular, encapsulated, shareable components, some of which are triggered by the arrival of one or more event objects. Event objects may be generated directly by an application, or they may be generated by an adapter or agent that operates non-invasively (for example, by examining message headers and message contents).EDA has an impact on every industry. Although mainstream adoption of all forms of EDA is still five to ten years away, complex-event processing EDA is now being used in financial trading, energy trading, supply chain, fraud detection, homeland security, telecommunications, customer contact center management, logistics and sensor networks, such as those based on RFID.

Model-driven Architecture is a registered trademark of the Object Management Group (OMG). It describes OMG's proposed approach to separating business-level functionality from the technical nuances of its implementation The premise behind OMG's Model-Driven Architecture and the broader family of model-driven approaches (MDAs) is to enable business-level functionality to be modeled by standards, such as Unified Modeling Language (UML) in OMG's case; allow the models to exist independently of platform-induced constraints and requirements; and then instantiate those models into specific runtime implementations, based on the target platform of choice. MDAs reinforce the focus on business first and technology second. The concepts focus attention on modeling the business: business rules, business roles, business interactions and so on. The instantiation of these business models in specific software applications or components flows from the business model. By reinforcing the business-level focus and coupling MDAs with SOA concepts, you end up with a system that is inherently more flexible and adaptable.

Corporate Semantic Web applies semantic Web technologies, aka semantic markup languages (for example, Resource Description Framework, Web Ontology Language and topic maps), to corporate Web content. Although mainstream adoption is still five to ten years away, many corporate IT areas are starting to engage in semantic Web technologies. Early adopters are in the areas of enterprise information integration, content management, life sciences and government. Corporate Semantic Web will reduce costs and improve the quality of content management, information access, system interoperability, database integration and data quality.

“The emerging technologies hype cycle covers the entire IT spectrum but we aim to highlight technologies that are worth adopting early because of their potentially high business impact,” said Jackie Fenn, Gartner Fellow and inventor of the first hype cycle. One of the features highlighted in the 2006 Hype Cycle is the growing consumerisation of IT. “Many of the Web 2.0 phenomenon have already reshaped the Web in the consumer world”, said Ms Fenn. “Companies need to establish how to incorporate consumer technologies in a secure and effective manner for employee productivity, and also how to transform them into business value for the enterprise”.

The benefit of a particular technology varies significantly across industries, so planners must determine which opportunities relate most closely to their organisational requirements. To make this easier, a new feature in Gartner’s 2006 hype cycle is a ‘priority matrix’ which clarifies a technology’s potential impact - from transformational to low – and the number of years it will take before it reaches mainstream adoption. “The pairing of each Hype Cycle with a Priority Matrix will help organisations to better determine the importance and timing of potential investments based on benefit rather than just hype,” said Ms Fenn.

gartner.com

How much are well-functioning environmental services like flood control and climate regulation worth to a company's bottom line? BSR has released a new Environmental Markets Trends Report in conjunction with launching an initiative that will help companies assess the risks and opportunities of emerging markets in carbon, water quality and biodiversity. Companies taking the lead in this field are seeing increased real estate value, consistent and high-quality supplies of raw materials, more cost-effective environmental management, cheaper cost of compliance and regulatory "goodwill."

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This new NanoMarkets report examines the market opportunities stemming from the latest generation of OLED and paper-like solutions in a variety of applications including advertising and shelf-edge displays, billboards, flat-screen televisions, desktop and notebook computers, book and newspaper readers, mobile phones, PDAs, MP3 players and disposable electronics. It covers a variety of critical new display technologies including small molecule OLEDs, polymer OLEDs, electrophoretics, cholesteric liquid crystal, electrochromics and toner-based displays. The report provides detailed eight-year forecasts for these new display technologies, broken out by application, technology, substrate type, etc. The report analyzes the market from all perspectives including materials suppliers, technology providers and consumer electronics firms.

The report is targeted towards materials suppliers, equipment manufacturers, components and module suppliers, display firms, companies producing mobile electronics products and anyone else interested in this emerging market opportunity.

Findings from the report:

Low-cost manufacturability: OLED displays and paper-like displays can both be created on flexible substrates such as plastic or foil. This means roll-to-roll production processes for display production are increasingly viable making the manufacturing process much more efficient. At the same time, advances in both inks and equipment are enabling OLED displays to be printed, significantly reducing the capital costs associated with display manufacturing. Both of these factors will drive down the total cost of displays, a key element for this market’s growth prospects.

New display technologies to transform signage: Paper-like displays are the first technology that offers the visual clarity, cost points and networking capabilities to enable retailers to continuously update product information. This capability is one of the main reasons that shelf-edge displays will be the biggest opportunity for the paper-like display business in the next few years, generating $1.2 billion in annual revenues by 2011.

OLEDs on TV: OLED technology will soon have color quality and resolution required for the television market. OLED televisions will reach $2.2 billion in revenues in 2011 and will take a slice out of the LCD television business.

Flexibility, clarity and mobility: Flexible substrates make it possible to expand the potential of mobile computing. New forms of flexible displays are also increasing the utility of mobile phones, PDA’s and other consumer electronic devices. NanoMarkets predicts that by 2011, flexible displays will account for $1.7 billion in revenues.

nanomarkets.net