Android Smartphones to Become Gateways?

Android Smartphone manufacturers are looking to the Digital Living Network Alliance's (DLNA) open-standard media sharing as an inexpensive way to differentiate themselves from Apple's iPhone, according to a new report by IMS Research. IMS expects Android smartphones to move into in-home media sharing and management.The IMS Research study, "Video Content Distribution in the Smart Home," forecasts that 70% of DLNA devices shipped outside of North America and Japan in 2015 will be WiFi-enabled smartphones. The vast majority of those are expected to be Android-based handsets, as Apple is not expected to embrace open-standard media services on its iPhones."We also expect to see a new culture of video portability emerge from that awareness," said Stephen Froehlich, senior analyst at IMS, in a statement. "In these regions, the smartphone essentially becomes a personal ID key that unlocks a consumer's access to his or her content library and then serves it to any DLNA video client in a home. This culture of media portability may lead to more aggressive cord-cutting in these regions than is anticipated in North America and Japan."