By Claus Hetting, Wi-Fi NOW CEO & Chairman
The enterprise Wi-Fi market continues to grow at an impressive pace with Cisco way ahead of the pack and gaining market share. The enterprise WLAN market growth is driven – at least in part – by the easing of component shortages as well as demand for Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E upgrades and expansions, IDC says in their latest market report. The consumer Wi-Fi segment continues contracted by single digits, IDC says.
While service provider and consumer Wi-Fi may have been the right businesses to be in 2020-2022, the enterprise Wi-Fi market is back with a vengeance and continues to grow on a year-on-year basis. According to IDC the segment grew 43% in 1Q2023 (year-on-year) rising to US$2.8 billion.
Wi-Fi 6 made up 78.6% of the segment’s revenues while Wi-Fi 6E adoption continues to grow nicely taking a 10.4% share of the AP market in 1Q2023, up 14% from 4Q2022. Perhaps most remarkable is the fact that Cisco expanded its market dominance by continuing to take enterprise Wi-Fi market share. Cisco’s market share landed at 47.1% at the end of 1Q23 with revenues rising 62.7% year-over-year. Cisco enterprise Wi-Fi revenue for the quarter was US$1.3 billion.
HPE-Aruba also continues to do well growing 39.5% year-over-year for 1Q2023 and landing on market share of 16%, IDC says. For more details on other vendors read here. Overall the fastest rate of growth happened in North America with the US market growing 67.4% year-on-year.
Meanwhile the consumer Wi-Fi segment declined 8.8% for the quarter year-on-year, IDC says.
/Claus.
