14 DAY TRIAL // Competing for connectivity supremacy, IEEE 1394 aka FireWire and USB high speed are just starting a PR war. On June 27, 2007, analysis company In-Stat announced that IEEE 1394 faced major challenges and that its market share was stagnating.
"1394 suffers from being the second-choice technology in many product segments," said Brian O'Rourke, an In-Stat analyst. "For example, 1394's historic one-third penetration of the PC market is now dwarfed by high-speed USB's 100% penetration. This has helped high-speed USB become the interface of choice for PC peripherals," he added.
In-Stat announced that 1394-enabled device shipments would grow by only 0.2% annually through 2011 and that from 2005 to 2006, 1394 penetration of digital camcorders had fell from 85% to 77%. The analysis company informs that digital camcorders are at the center of the FireWire ecosystem, so a disturbance in their evolution has a direct impact on the IEEE 1394's market share.
The 1394 Trade Association responded quickly to the accusations with a press release in which it was proudly announced that several notebooks manufacturers fitted their latest products with a FireWire port. Here are a few excerpts from the press release:
"In late June, Toshiba Corporation launched its new 1394-equipped 14-inch feature-packed Tecra X9 designed primarily for business users. The Tecra X9 comes in a black or silver casing and includes a built-in fingerprint reader along with the 1394a input and a DVD burner"
"Among the most innovative developers is NextComputing, creators of the first flextop computer, which announced its 1394-equipped NextDimension portables family at the annual NetWorld Interop Conference in Las Vegas. Featuring 1394a and the low voltage 50W version of Quad-Core Intel Xeon Processor 5300 Series, the NextDimension provides up to eight cores in the briefcase-sized 'supercomputer'."
Performance tests indicate that Firewire is slightly better that the high-speed USB 2.0, but the $0.25 charge per system and the increasing popularity of the Universal Serial Bus have led to a decrease in the adoption of Apple's IEEE 1394.
Unfortunately, the fact that Firewire is present in some of the new notebooks is not that spectacular, especially if you compare the number of USB ports to the number of IEEE 1394 ports.
It's a little bit far fetched to claim that Firewire is dying, but to say that it is doing well just because it has been implemented in some products is rather hilarious. What's even more hilarious is that Intel, one of the main USB developers, is now working with Apple, which is the inventor of Firewire. Isn't that ironic?