This IDC study provides Western European network interface car (NIC), LAN on Motherboard (LOM), and Mini PCI shipment data for 2003 and compares it with 2002 data. NIC shipments are further split by vendor market share and technology. Moreover, vendor shares for 2003 are provided by country and by technology.

Countries include Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Switzerland, Austria, Spain, Portugal, and Greece. Technologies include 10Mbps Ethernet, 10/100Mbps Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet, and wireless LAN (WLAN).

"Apart from network connections in the PC environment, a growing number of consumer devices will have network connections in the future. As the number of broadband Internet connections continues to grow, it will become attractive to connect devices such as set-top boxes, audio/video equipment, and gaming consoles to the home network. Devices will be preinstalled with a WLAN connection or will be network enabled through a media adapter or USB receiver," said Evelien Wiggers, senior research analyst for IDC's Telecommunications and Networking service.