The worldwide Wireless LAN (WLAN) market achieved a record high in 2010 as revenues grew 25 percent to surpass $5 billion, according to a new report from Dell’Oro Group. The report also shows that the small office, home office (SOHO) segment surpassed $3 billion, while the Enterprise WLAN segment grew at its fastest rate since 2006 to exceed $2 billion in 2010.
According to the report, the following vendors each posted full-year 2010 WLAN revenue growth that exceeded 40 percent: Alcatel-Lucent, Aruba, Belkin, NETGEAR, Tropos, and ZyXEL.
“The enterprise WLAN segment has now seen seven straight quarters of revenue growth, having pushed its way over the $500 million mark for the first time in the third quarter of 2010, and then over the $600 million mark in the fourth quarter,” stated Loren Shalinsky, Senior Analyst of Wireless LAN research at Dell’Oro Group. “Enterprise WLAN vendors recognized continued strength from the education and healthcare vertical segments, but also saw a corresponding rise from their general enterprise sales as well. We believe this to be another sign of the continued importance of wireless LAN to companies’ networking infrastructures, and of a worldwide economy that is on the upswing. Almost all enterprise WLAN vendors had at least modest quarterly revenue gains in the fourth quarter, but Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, and Aruba each posted quarterly revenue gains of more than 10 percent,” added Shalinsky.
