Driven by the popularity of Wi-Fi 6, the enterprise segment of the worldwide wireless local area network (WLAN) market had a tremendous second quarter, according to International Data Corporation’s Worldwide Quarterly Wireless LAN Tracker. IDC said that the category had a revenue increase of 43.3% year-over-year and reached $3 billion. At the same time, the consumer segment of the market declined 14%.
The stars of the quarter were Wi-Fi 6 dependent access points (APs).
As an IDC representative explained in an email to Telecompetitor, a dependent access point, also known as a “thin, light, managed or in-building managed” access point relies on a centralized controller or alternate management or control platform for operation and management.
The Wi-Fi 6 subcategory comprises 79.7% of dependent AP revenues, IDC said. Wi-Fi 6E, which incorporates the use of the 6 GHz band, saw its revenues grow 51.5% between the first and second quarters of the year. That subgroup now constitutes 14.3% of dependent AP revenues and 7.7% of dependent AP unit shipments.
Wi-Fi 6 did well in the consumer segment during the second quarter, representing 51.6% of consumer Wi-Fi revenues.
The United States market increased 79.5% year over year in the second quarter while the market rose 79.1% in Canada and 49.6% in Latin America.
“The enterprise WLAN market continued its strong growth momentum in the second quarter of 2023, which builds on strong growth for much of the past calendar year,” Brandon Butler, IDC’s research manager for enterprise networks, said.
“A significant factor driving WLAN market growth continues to be the easing of component shortages and supply chain disruptions, which is allowing vendors to recognize revenue from fulfilling backlogged product orders. Meanwhile, the continued adoption of new Wi-Fi standards adds to market momentum.”
The IDC report includes how the top six companies performed in the enterprise WLAN segment during the second quarter. Cisco, which dominates the market with a 43.5% share, saw its revenues increase 65.6% year-over-year to $1.3 billion.
Here are how the other five companies in the WLAN market performed:
- HPE Aruba Networking’s revenues rose 55.3% annually (16.2% market share);
- Huawei’s revenues rose 26.6% compared to the second quarter of 2022 (7.5%.market share)
- Ubiquiti’s revenues increased 4.4%. Its market share was 5.8%;
- CommScope’s revenues increased 72.2% year over year in the quarter (4.8%.market share); and
- Juniper Networks’ revenues increased 39.3% (3.7%market share);
In March 2022, the Comcast Business Gateway was introduced into the small and medium-sized business market. The gateway, which offers gigabit speed performance, is built on Wi-Fi 6 technology from Comcast’s xFi advanced gateway platform.
