Forget about a PC in every home. 3Com and Microsoft envision several computers per household, and they want to be there to tie them all together.
Angling to cash in on what they figure to be a lucrative market, the companies on Thursday said they would jointly develop a line of home-networking products to make it easier to share Net connections, peripherals, and applications.
"Given the trend toward multiple PCs in homes and the growth of broadband Internet access, we anticipate tremendous growth in the home-networking arena this year," said Rick Thompson, vice president of the hardware group at Microsoft. "The products we are building with 3Com let consumers get the most out of their PCs with little effort or technical savvy required."
Although the market is now relatively small, DataQuest recently projected that the home-networking industry will be worth some US$2 billion annually by 2002.
The growth of the Net and falling PC prices are expected to fuel that growth, but 3Com (COMS) and Microsoft (MSFT) believe that making home networking a less daunting task for consumers is key to exploiting the market's possibilities.
The companies emphasized that the focus of their co-branded products will be ease of use, with software that automatically configures computers without complicated instructions or technical jargon.
"Combining the strengths of 3Com and Microsoft enables us to lead in the home-networking arena by offering a simple, out-of-the-box experience," said Roy Johnson, vice president of 3Com's home networking business unit.
The companies said their kits will allow people to build a home network over their phone lines, power lines, or by radio frequency, and promised 10Mbs transmission speeds over the network.
Reuters contributed to this report.
