Can Apple's iMacs keep FireWire burning?

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 09 August 2007 18:25

Your IT - Home IT

"Also last winter Agere Systems, now part of LSI Logic, introduced the first ICs that integrate 1394b with the PCI Express bus (PCIe) on one chip, its TrueFIRE device, providing designers of PC, notebooks and consumer electronic devices with a richer and more versatile feature set."

However, in a report issued in June, market research firm, In-Stat, said: "IEEE1394 faces major challenges and its market share is stagnating. The peak year for 1394 devices is expected to be 2008, and a slow decline will set in beginning in 2009."

In-Stat analyst, Brian O'Rourke, said: "1394 suffers from being the second-choice technology in many product segments. For example, 1394's historic one-third penetration of the PC market is now dwarfed by high-speed USB's 100 percent penetration. This has helped high-speed USB become the interface of choice for PC peripherals."

In-Stat is predicting that 1394-enabled device shipments will grow by only 0.2 percent annually through 2011. "1394 had created an ecosystem, with digital camcorders at the centre, but there has been slippage in this ecosystem recently. From 2005 to 2006, 1394 penetration of digital camcorders fell from 85 percent to 77 percent."

FireWire was originated by Apple in the early 90s (FireWire is Apple's proprietary name). The technology was adopted by the IEEE and standardised as IEEE 1394 with contributions for other manufacturers, including Sony which call it i.Link and which uses it all its laptop computers.