Infotech Lead India: Sales of consumer devices with 802.11ac Wi-Fi, including routers and gateways, will cross 1 billion units in 2015.
This will be equivalent to over 40 percent of all Wi-Fi-enabled devices. The global sales of Wi-Fi CE devices will reach 2.8 billion in 2017.
Mobile devices, primarily smartphones and tablets, are expected to be the early adopting device categories of 802.11ac, whereas connected TVs, streaming media players and other fixed devices will follow the trend gradually.
Jia Wu, Director, Connected Home Devices, Strategy Analytics, said: “The evolution of Wi-Fi continues and we expect the transition to 802.11ac to be faster than it was to 802.11n in the past. Consumers now have a better understanding of the benefits faster Wi-Fi can bring. Similar to the transition from 3G to LTE, once the CE device industry starts to adopt 802.11ac at full speed, consumers are very likely to embrace it.”
Some growth barriers such as lackluster backbone Internet speed still need to be cleared for consumers to fully take advantage of the benefits of the Wi-Fi evolution.
