Wireless networking vendors grew revenue, particularly from 802.11ac access points
In a new market analysis report, Infonetics Research tallied some $5 billion in wireless local area networking gear sold in 2014, with 802.11ac access points powering growth.
Infonetics reported approximately 1.2 million 802.11ac access points shipped in Q4 of 2014 alone. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ Standards Association developed the 802.11ac wireless networking standard, which supports theoretical speeds up to 1 gigabit per second and single link throughput of up to 500 megabits per second.
Infonetics found that the top five WLAN industry vendors included Aruba, Cisco, Hewlett-Packard, Ruckus and Zebra-Ruckus. Globally, $4.9 billion in revenue came from WLAN equipment sales, which represents a 6% increase in revenue generated in 2013.
Although positive growth, the market has declined significantly from 20% annual growth rates of just a few years ago. The fastest-growing world markets for WLAN equipment were Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The EMEA region pushed a 9% year-over-year revenue increase.
Infonetics Research analyst Matthias Machowinski attributed some of the slowdown in growth to decreased spending on public education in the U.S.
“A pullback in K-12 spending … has caused a significant slowdown in the WLAN market, which, after having grown at double-digit rates for several years, grew only 6% in 2014,” Machowinski explained. “The good news is that the fourth quarter of 2014 looks to be the turning point. [Request for proposal] activity is accelerating in anticipation of new funding in 2015, and that, coupled with the introduction of 802.11ac Wave 2 access points, will drive renewed growth in 2015.”
Wave 2 is an as-yet undefined standard that builds on throughput achieved in 802.11ac; many major OEMs unveiled Wave 2 routers in January at the Consumer Electronics Show.
D-Link Systems, for instance, rolled out its Ultra Performance series routers, including the AC3200, which supports speeds up to 3.2 Gbps on three bands: two in the 5 GHz band and one in the 2.4 GHz band.
A major component of Wave 2 is multiuser multiple-input, multiple-output functionality. In home applications will allow multiple users to simultaneously access multiple content streams – your favorite Netflix series, for example – without overly taxing the connection.
