Microsoft entry into the market has made the competitive environment more intense. Aggressive pricing practices, promotions, and channel marketing on a worldwide basis from Microsoft have had an impact on revenues and margins for all vendors.

Worldwide retail network includes wholesale distributors, consumer electronics retailers, mass merchandisers, specialty electronics stores, computer and telecommunications stores, value added resellers and online merchants. The large majority of revenues are derived from sales of products for use by consumers, with sales of products for use by businesses amounting to a small part of revenues.

Markets are competitive and are characterized by short product life cycles, rapidly changing technology, evolving customer demands, and aggressive promotional and pricing practices. In order to remain competitive, continued investment in product research and development is critical to driving innovation.

New and improved products and technologies drive market growth. Logitech is committed to identifying and meeting customer trends with an innovative product portfolio. It seeks to increase the value of the Logitech brand from a competitive, channel partner and consumer experience perspective. Innovation and product quality are helping gain market acceptance and strengthen market leadership.

Architecture Revolution

Architecture allows products to achieve processing speed, signal quality and power consumption performance comparable to that obtained from competing fixed function hardware. Unlike fixed function hardware, which is suitable for single applications such as video processing, products can support a variety of multimedia applications such as audio, video and imaging using a single processor.

This allows achieving levels of integration comparable to those offered by general purpose semiconductor devices such as CPUs and baseband processors. Since processors are designed solely for multimedia applications, rather than a broad spectrum of computing tasks, processors avoid the need for the complex control software used by CPUs and baseband processors, and can therefore offer significantly better processing speed, signal quality and power consumption performance.

Value of Innovation

Vendors do research on advanced technologies for webcam software products and services. Delivering breakthrough innovation and high-value solutions through integrated software platform is key. Meeting customer needs and achieving growth depends on innovation. Vendors continue to lay the foundation for long term growth by delivering products and services, creating opportunities for partners, improving customer satisfaction, and improving internal processes.

Microsoft focus is to build on this foundation through ongoing innovation in integrated software platforms; by delivering compelling value propositions to customers; by responding effectively to customer and partner needs; and by continuing to emphasize the importance of product excellence, business efficacy, and accountability.

Cisco Linksys Wireless G Direct Internet Home Monitoring Security Camera Works without a PC connection. The Cisco Linksys Wireless G Internet home monitoring camera sends live video through the Internet to a web browser anywhere in the world. This compact, self contained unit lets you keep track of your home, your kids, your workplace -- whatever's important to you.

Unlike standard "web cams" that require an attached PC, the Internet Home Monitoring Camera contains its own web server, so it can connect directly to a network, either over Wireless G (802.11g) networking, or over 10/100 Ethernet cable. Choose either MPEG 4 or Motion JPEG video compression for a high-quality, highframe rate, up to 640x480 video stream.

Markets for webcams at $1.8 billion in 2008 are anticipated to reach $3.2 billion by 2015, growing in response to decreases in unit costs and increases. WebCams used in social networking, Internet communications, instant messaging, notebook portable computers, and PCs are proving the technology for video communication. Widespread use in a range of applications proves the feasibility of this technology. The large emerging markets are for video communication and security powered by evolving systems.

WEBCAM MARKET EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

WebCam Market Driving Forces

WebCam Image Quality

WebCam Shutter Speed

WebCam Network Speed

WebCam Sensitivity

WebCam Market Shares

WebCam Market Forecasts

Architecture Revolution

Value of Innovation

Cisco Linksys Wireless-G Direct Internet Home

Monitoring Security Camera Works Without PC Connection

1. WEBCAM MARKET DESCRIPTION AND MARKET DYNAMICS

1.1 Trends In The WebCam Consumer Technology Market

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