The soaring popularity of digital cameras, together with digital audio and video files, is fuelling a boom in home network storage demand, research published today has found.

According to the latest data from market watcher In-Stat, unit sales of consumer network storage will grow by more than 50 per cent over the "next several years".

"Five more primary vendors entered the network storage market during 2005 with product lines that targeted consumers," said In-Stat analyst Joyce Putscher. "That almost doubles the number of major players that participated in 2004."

The report noted that challenges for vendors include providing the right combination of features and price points, and consumer education about the difference between external PC hard drives and storage attached to a home network.

A major feature being added is media adapter functionality to address the " home networking explosion", according to the study.