They'll be looking hard for a target market... (Score 2, Insightful)

My brother was on the board of directors of a medium-sized home automation company (no, not the annoying one), and they considered creating and subsidizing an operation like this to showcase all of their cutting-edge products. They did their market research back in 1998, when there were countless dot-com nouveau millionaires who were looking for cool new ways to blow a wad of cash on their pathetic selves, and found strong demand for their project. In fact, the late 90s made the company extremely wealthy and many of their staffers took an early retirement.

Fast forward to 2002. The company has scaled back their operations considerably. New market research data shows that there is almost nobody who would want to pay to live in a fully automated apartment. Hopeless companies no longer have stock valuations based more in ignorance than in profit potential. The Era of High Tech Toys has passed us by. I'm not sure what HP, "home of the earnings warning," is thinking, but something tells me that their cool new automated homes are not going to pave the way back to profitability.

~wally