The desktop multimedia network market is poised for success, and although videoconferencing is dominant now, it will not dominate user demand in the future. This is the finding of Desktop Multimedia Networking: The Business Challenge, a report from industry watcher Ovum Ltd. The report values the desktop multimedia market at $500m by the end of the century, rising to $3,000m by 2003. Until, now the desktop multimedia network market has been held back because so few people understood multimedia that they could not understand why they would want to spend money on networking it even though it has been possible to run multimedia over local networks for over a decade, the authors say. The only multimedia applications whose costs are easy justify are those involving videoconferencing, where the elimination of travel costs is easily quantified, and this is one reason it is currently leading in the multimedia market. But as the peripherals needed to make a multimedia personal computer decline in cost more users will be provided with videoconferencing and this will increase pressure for multimedia local networks. The major drivers for desktop multimedia networks will be end-user push – users with personal computer Internet access at home demanding similar functionality at work; technology creep – multimedia components being integrated as standard and packages developed specifically for applications in sectors such as healthcare, finance and education.
