Third Quarter Sees Wireless LAN Growth Drop Below 10 Percent

Infonetics produces a quarterly report that takes a look at how wireless LAN and Wi-Fi phones are doing within the industry. The report, entitled “Wireless LAN Equipment and Wi-Fi Phones,” provides global, as well as regional market size and vendor market share.

The report also analyzes and forecasts trends for WLAN infrastructure through 2017. This includes access points by type and technology, WLAN controllers and enterprise single-mode Wi-Fi phones. Some of the vendors that were tracked for this report include Cisco, D-Link, Juniper, Ubiquiti, Netgear and Alcatel-Lucent.

Except for this quarter, Wireless LAN equipment and Wi-Fi phones has seen double digit year-over-year growth. That is just shy of four years or 15 consecutive quarters of growth.  Matthias Machowinski is the directing analyst for enterprise networks and video at Infonetics Research. He believes that this drop is just a small and temporary situation.

Machowinski said, “After 15 quarters of double-digit year-over-year growth, WLAN equipment growth fell below the 10 percent mark in the third quarter of 2013, due to the 802.11n transition nearing completion and 802.11ac not yet having a significant effect on the market. Still, we consider this a temporary slowdown and expect growth to reaccelerate in the coming years as buyers focus on their WLAN infrastructure to support the growth of wireless devices and enable BYOD and employee mobility.”

We have just been given a glimpse of the report through a brief excerpt. Some of the highlights of the third quarter 2013 WLAN Market report are as follows:

• Worldwide enterprise wireless LAN (WLAN) equipment revenue edged up one percent sequentially in 3Q13, to $1.2 billion
• 3Q13 marks the first full quarter in which 802.11ac products were widely available and three percent of access points sold were based on this new standard
• Independent access point revenue is down 40 percent year-over-year in 3Q13, reflecting the shift toward centrally-managed WLAN
• In North America and Asia Pacific, WLAN growth slowed sharply in 3Q13; meanwhile, EMEA is doing well despite relatively weaker economic conditions
• Number one Cisco’s WLAN revenue share is up a half-point in 3Q13 from 2Q13, and up over four points from 3Q12
• After a tough couple of years, Wi-Fi phone shipments are growing again on a year-over-year basis

 As you can see from the chart below, although the third quarter suffered a minor setback, growth is expected to be significant in the next four years. The forecast is that the market will exceed $7 billion in that time.