Wireless LAN Market on Fire

As cable operators beef up their broadband offerings, telecom research firm Dell’Oro Group reports that the wireless LAN market has grown 17% over the last year, as of 1Q. Outdoor device shipments turned in the strongest performance.  Broadband Customer Premise Equipment was also a huge bright spot, driven largely by DOCSIS 3.0 adoption that has juiced demand for new equipment.

 

Dell’Oro said that Cisco and Hewlett-Packard are leading the way in enterprise markets while NetGear and Technicolor are the leaders in the SOHO space. In the Service Provider WiFi market, Cisco Systems, Ericsson and Ruckus Wireless are the top three vendors by revenue.  

 

Also making a big impact on shipments is the emerging 802.11ac standard that will allow for up to 1Gbps data rates on WiFi. “In 2013, vendors will introduce enterprise-class product refreshes that encompass two important advancements—wireless and wired convergence, and the new Wireless LAN standard, 802.11ac,” said Chris DePuy, vp, wireless LAN research at Dell’Oro Group. “Each of the leading vendors is employing a different strategy as they navigate these two market conditions. So, we expect market shares and growth rates could be volatile over the next several quarters.”