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Ericsson And Red Hat In Home Communications
Inforum writes: "From the Ericsson Web site: 'Ericsson and Red Hat announced a strategic initiative to develop a new range of consumer products and services for home communications.
They will develop consumer products combining existing industry standards, such as Java, and the latest open source technologies, such as Embedded Red Hat Linux. The products will also support existing and evolving standards such as broadband networking and Bluetooth ...'
Then I wonder: what will happen to Symbian?"
... is something we've been hearing about for a long time - remember those old 50s shows that portrayed everyone in silver suits sitting around in uncomfortable looking chairs whilst unlikely-looking robots catered for our every need :) And yet the average house of today is little different from what it was 30 years ago - there are more gadgets but its still the same idea.
Now we have several companies offering us amazing new products which will turn our houses into networks constantly linked to the outside world through broadband connections. But the thing I wonder is - is the demand there yet?
For sure there'll be those of us who like gadgets - most of /. for instance - for whom a setup like this will be almost irresitable. But for the average homeowner having all of this is still somewhat redundant - they just don't need an entire house connected via wireless links. As of now there isn't any real need for having your fridge/cooker/whatever connected to the rest of the house. Sure, there are advantages, but not enough for anyone to lay out the kind of money this will take.
So apart from a few of us who like flashy new equipment, the take-up of this kind of technology will most likely to be pretty slow. Still, if it gets built into new houses then it'll gradually become the norm, but I don't think it'll become the next "must have" thing.
-Omar