The combined consumer and enterprise worldwide wireless local area network (WLAN) market segments rose 2.3% year over year in the first quarter of 2020 (1Q20), according to IDC’S Worldwide Quarterly WLAN Tracker. However, The enterprise segment fell 2.2% year over year in 1Q20 with $1.3 billion in revenue.
A driver for the enterprise WLAN market is the new Wi-Fi 6 standard, also known as 802.11ax. Across the enterprise market, Wi-Fi 6-supported dependent access points (APs) made up 11.8% of unit shipments and 21.8% of revenues. The previous generation standard, 802.11ac, still made up the majority of shipments (80.9%) and revenues (76.2%).
Meanwhile, the consumer WLAN market grew 5.5% year over year in 1Q20. Within the consumer market, 62.5% of shipments and 79.4% of revenues were for 802.11ac products. APs supporting the older 802.11n standard still made up 36.9% of unit shipments and 17.6% of revenues, not surprising given the price sensitivity seen across many emerging markets.
“Wireless connectivity remains an important technology for organizations around the world as more users and devices than ever rely on mobile devices to connect to bandwidth-intensive applications,” said Brandon Butler, senior research analyst, Network Infrastructure at IDC. “The WLAN market is not immune to the impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic that has been sweeping across the world over the last few months. Results from the market’s first quarter of 2020 show the early effect of the pandemic and subsequent lockdown, which will continue to impact the market into the second quarter of 2020.”
