According to the preliminary results published in the International Data Corporation in their Worldwide Quarterly WLAN Tracker, the combined consumer and enterprise worldwide wireless local area network (WLAN) market segments grew 9.2% year over year in the second quarter of 2014. The enterprise segment continued to grow at a steady rate and increased 7.7% over the same period last year. IDC said that while the pace of the enterprise WLAN market growth has been steadily decreasing over the last several quarters, the market continues to be one of the faster growing networking market segments.
Within the WLAN segment, the newer and faster 802.11ac standard now accounts for 19% of dependent access point shipments and 30% of dependent access point revenues. The faster growth in the adoption of the new standard, says IDC, is primarily due to aggressive pricing for the 802.11ac access points adopted by most vendors, as well as the inherent benefits of 802.11ac products in high density environments.
In terms of the two market segments - consumer WLAN and enterprise WLAN, the consumer WLAN market showed a strong uptrend, growing at 10.9% year over year, on the back of transitions from the older 802.11n standard to the newer and faster 802.11ac standard as well as from rapid adoptions in the emerging markets. As for the enterprise WLAN, IDC said that Latin America contributed significantly towards the segment, with 35.4% year-over-year growth in 2Q14. Countries like Brazil and Argentina saw growth rates of 61.5% and 51.3% respectively for the enterprise WLAN.
IDC also reported vendor performance in the enterprise WLAN segment, saying that Aruba and Ruckus enjoyed strong growths in the 2Q14 at 19.1% year-over-year and 27.7% year-over-year respectively, while Cisco and HP saw a decline, with year-over-year growth rates of -2.3% and -17.5% respectively. The market share of these players, according to the report is as follows: Cisco:46.8%, Aruba:11.8%,Ruckus: 6.2% and HP: 4.5%.
"The continued worldwide growth of WLAN across different verticals and use cases demonstrates WLAN's importance to today's enterprise, as it supports a growing number of business-critical mobility applications. While growth has stabilized, enterprise requirements around mobility and cloud applications, as well as the emergence of the Internet of Things, are driving network upgrades and greenfield deployments. This, along with the rapid uptake of the 802.11ac standard, will help sustain WLAN market growth in the near to mid-term."
- Rohit Mehra, Vice President, Network Infrastructure, at IDC
“Although growth was flat for some of the traditionally strong vendors and regions in 2Q14, the worldwide enterprise WLAN market remains strong as technological innovations, along with increasing network demands, drive investments in network infrastructure."
- Petr Jirovský, Research Manager, Worldwide Networking Trackers
