WLAN equipment sales grew 6 percent sequentially and 8 percent year-on-year to $1.4 billion in Q3 2016, said IHS Markit.
Access point shipments rose 21 percent year-over-year to 6 million, including over 500,000 802.11ac wave 2 units. Wave 2 accounted for 10 percent of all units in Q3, nearly double Q2’s rate.
Despite strong adoption of 802.11ac and wave 2 products, average selling prices have declined more than 10 percent year-over-year.
Matthias Machowinski, senior research director, enterprise networks and video, IHS Markit, said the demand for WLAN is strong, but monetizing that demand has been a challenge for the last two years as organizations chose lower-cost approaches.
The outlook for the global WLAN market remains bright, as infrastructure investments over the long term will shift to WLAN equipment to support the rapid rise of wireless devices, both personal and for the Internet of Things (IoT), and also requirements for mobility.
Asia Pacific is the fastest-growing region for WLAN in 2016 – driven by fiscal stimulus in China.
Due to new FCC E-Rate program, WLAN sales to K-12 customers have recovered in North America.
There will be lower growth in 2017 in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) due to Brexit, followed by a resurgence in 2018 that will continue through 2020.
Cisco held first place for WLAN equipment revenue in Q3 2016, HPE (Aruba) was a solid number two and Brocade (Ruckus) rounded out the top three. But the top growth performers (versus a year ago) were Huawei and Ubiquiti.
Huawei has grown into major WLAN player, tripling revenue, thanks to steady demand in its core market of China and expansion in Europe.
Ubiquiti is up 53 percent in Q3 from a year ago due to portfolio updates.
IDC earlier said the consumer and enterprise WLAN market segments increased 1.8 percent year-over-year and 6.7 percent on a sequential basis to $2.47 billion in Q3 2016.
Enterprise segment grew 8.4 percent year-over-year to $1.45 billion – mainly due to refresh cycles and the funding of digital transformation initiatives in many enterprises.
The 802.11ac standard accounts for 67.1 percent of dependent access point unit shipments and 80.9 percent of dependent access point revenues.
Consumer WLAN market revenue fell 6.3 percent year-over-year to $1.02 billion. The adoption of the 802.11ac standard in the consumer market has been significantly slower than in the enterprise segment. IDC said the 802.11ac standard accounted for 25.2 percent of shipments and 52.7 percent of revenue in the consumer category.
“In every facet of business, and across different verticals from education to hospitality, mission-critical functions are continuing to migrate from the wired network to wireless. This positions the worldwide enterprise WLAN market to continue performing strongly, even as other markets experience softness,” said Nolan Greene, senior research analyst, Network Infrastructure at IDC.
Baburajan K
editor@infotechlead.com
