Global WLAN market growth slows in Q1 2015

Worldwide enterprise WLAN market increased three per cent as consumer side dips

The enterprise WLAN market continued to grow in Q1, rising by three per cent annually, despite the consumer market seeing a decrease for the first time in several months, of two per cent.

Consumer revenues of the newer and faster 802.11ac WLAN shot up by 143 per cent year over year, but the impact was dampened by the 21.7 per cent decline in revenues of the older 802.11n.

Nolan Greene, research analyst of network infrastructure at IDC, said: "From education to healthcare to large enterprise, the increasing preference for wireless network access will continue to be seen, especially as emerging Wave 2 802.11ac will enable more applications to move to wireless."

The EMEA enterprise market experienced a considerable increase of 11.5 per cent year over year, which is the fourth consecutive quarter of growth.

The enterprise wireless local area network (WLAN) market in the US has seen a 5.4 per cent decline in the first quarter of 2015 when compared with the year before, reports IDC.

The decline has been put down to certain areas of the US education market delaying spend on WLAN.

Petr Jirovsky, research manager of worldwide networking trackers at IDC, said: "Many of the regions saw healthy growth in the first quarter as 802.11ac deployments increased and organisations worldwide are becoming more dependent on enterprise WLANs.

"However, weakness in the US due to postponed projects and seasonal softness had a material impact on the overall worldwide growth rate."

Cisco's enterprise WLAN revenue increased by 2.4 per cent year over year, with its market share falling to 47.8 per cent.

Ruckus saw its revenue in this area rise 7.2 per cent annually, accounting for 6.9 per cent of the overall market, and Aruba proved most successful with revenues up by 20.1 per cent over the same period.

HP on the other hand watched its revenues slip 15.5 per cent, possibly caused by customer uncertainty around HP WLAN, IDC said. The vendor's market share currently sits at 3.6 per cent.

IDC predicts that as the newer version of WLAN emerges in the second half of this year, it will – in terms of shipments and revenues – become the predominant global standard by 2016.