Greetings Chairman Hiroyuki Umemura, Group Senior vice President, Living Environment & Digital Media Equipment Group, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation   The ECHONET Consortium was established in 1997 to improve life in harmony with the environment in the 21st century.   For reducing CO2 emission and improving home security and healthcare, the ECHONET Consortium has since developed key software and hardware technologies for home network systems that can be applied to remote control / monitoring of home appliances, and so on. The core technologies of the ECHONET Specification have thus been established. The ECHONET Specification is a universal transmission standard for various services in home network systems that combine home appliances of different manufacturers through easily-wired transmission media for either newly built or existing houses.   The ECHONET Specification has been approved as international standards and it become time to demonstrate advantages of ECHONET globally.   The Member Companies are currently releasing their products and services compliant with the ECHONET Specification. Smart grid related projects have been evolved globally. Smart Houses composed with IT home networks, which have an important position in these situations, are highly expected.   From now on, we consider realization of Smart Houses as a major subject, and work on study of applications for accelerating market formation and dissemination of ECHONET compliant products. We also make efforts to revise the ECHONET Specification to respond to future new technologies.   We hope that the many companies applying the ECHONET Specification to their products will join the Consortium, to promote and evolve ECHONET for the benefit of society. We look forward to your support. [ Directors ] Yoshihoro Kitamura Division Deputy General Manager, Advanced Technology Development Center, Health & Environment Systems Group, SHARP Corporation Mitsuyoshi Tatsumi Chief Technology Executive, Director, Toshiba Consumer Electronics Holdings Corporation Hisashi Kodama, Executive Senior Councilor, Panasonic Corporation Mitsuo Kawaguchi Board Director & General Manager, Document & Expression Auditing Office, Hitachi Appliances, Inc.