The combined enterprise and consumer wireless local area network (WLAN) market segments fell 3.6% year over year in the third quarter of 2019 (3Q19) with worldwide revenues of $3.8 billion, according to IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly WLAN Tracker. The enterprise segment fell 1.1% year over year in 3Q19 to $1.62 billion.
“The enterprise WLAN market is transitioning as vendors and customers begin to adopt the latest Wi-Fi standard. In the third quarter of 2019, IDC tracked the initial shipments of 802.11ax, also known as Wi-Fi 6, which includes numerous features for enterprises and Internet of Things use cases,” said Brandon Butler, senior research analyst, Enterprise Networks. “IDC expects the continued adoption of Wi-Fi 6 to be a major driver of growth for the enterprise WLAN market in the fourth quarter of 2019 and throughout 2020.”
Some highlights:
- Wi-Fi 6 took some share from shipments of previous generation 802.11ac products. 802.11ac products accounted for 84.8% of dependent access point shipments in the enterprise segment and 86.2% of dependent access point revenues. Wi-Fi 6 products made up 3.1% of dependent access point shipments and 6.1% of revenues.
- The consumer WLAN market fell 5.3% year over year to $2.18 billion.
- Shipments of 802.11ac products accounted for 57.0% of units shipped, and 78.1% of revenues. The previous-generation 802.11n standard accounted for 42.8% of shipments, but only 20.8% of revenues.
- The Asia/Pacific region, excluding Japan, was up 3.3% annually in 3Q19, with China growing 6.9% year over year while the Korean market fell 16.2%. Japan’s market dropped 19.8% compared to a year earlier.
- The Central and Eastern Europe region was off 1.7% compared to a year earlier, with Russia dropping 6.6%.
- Romania was a bright spot in the region with 11.9% growth.
- The Western Europe region fell 4.5% year over year. Germany fell 3.5% while the United Kingdom was down 10.0%. The Middle East and Africa region grew 8.0% year over year with growth of 6.7% from the United Arab Emirates and 25.5% from Qatar.
- The Latin America region fell 12.1% with Mexico off 17.3% year over year. The U.S. market rose 0.1% on an annualized basis and was up 0.5% sequentially from the second quarter of 2019.
- Cisco’s worldwide enterprise WLAN revenue fell 4.9% year over year, but grew 1.9% compared to the previous quarter. The company’s market share dropped slightly from 44.9% in 2Q19 to 44.2% in 3Q19.
- HPE-Aruba’s revenues increased 1.3% year over year and rose 4.6% sequentially. The company’s market share grew to 14.1% in 3Q19 from 14.0% a quarter earlier.
- Ubiquiti’s revenues rose 9.4% annually and 8.6% sequentially, with the company’s market share growing to 7.1%, from 6.8% a quarter earlier.
- Huawei’s quarterly revenues rose to 11.2% year over year and were up 3.7% sequentially, giving the company 5.4% market share.
- CommScope(formerly ARRIS/Ruckus) was off 20.3% year over year and was down 6.7% compared to 2Q19. That caused the company’s market share to drop from 5.8% in the second quarter to 5.2% in 3Q19.