The combined consumer and enterprise worldwide wireless local area network (WLAN) market segments experienced year-over-year growth of 12,5% in the first quarter of 2013 (1Q13).
According to the results published in the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly WLAN Tracker, the enterprise segment continued to grow at a healthy rate of 19,3% over the same period last year. The first quarter of 2013 was the 13th consecutive quarter with annual growth greater than 15%.
The consumer WLAN market also started the year 2013 on a relative high note, growing 6,2% year-over-year.
“The explosion of mobile devices and the uptake of enterprise mobility applications continue to be top of mind for enterprise IT in terms of driving WLAN infrastructure growth across a wide range of enterprise verticals and use cases,” says Rohit Mehra, VP: network infrastructure at IDC.
“While this quarter saw some slowing of growth in WiFi infrastructure rollouts for mobile offload applications, the longer term trend of cellular operators and managed service providers leveraging WiFi stays intact and will continue to boost additional growth in the coming years.”
From a geographic perspective, the enterprise WLAN market performed especially well in Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) where it increased 36,7% year-over-year in 1Q13. Within that region, Indonesia recorded the highest year-over-year growth rate of 550%, with total revenues reaching nearly $15-million in 1Q13.
The enterprise market was also fairly strong in Middle East and Africa (MEA), in Western Europe and in the United States, up 25,1%, 20%, and 19,8% respectively on an annual basis.
The performance in other major regions was considerably weaker as Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) was up low single digits, and both Japan and Latin America actually saw low single-digit declines year-over-year.
“Although there was significant regional and country level variance in terms of WLAN market growth in 1Q13, the worldwide outlook for enterprise, service provider, and consumer segments remains very positive as vendors and end-users start to prepare for the next technology upgrade cycle,” says Petr Jirovsky, senior research analyst: worldwide network trackers group at IDC.
* Cisco’s 1Q13 worldwide enterprise WLAN revenue grew a strong 23,4% year-over-year, reaching $510-million in the quarter. The North American market accounted for 48,8% of Cisco’s worldwide enterprise WLAN revenue in 1Q13. Cisco’s worldwide market share stands at 52,9% in 1Q13, its highest share since 4Q10.
* Aruba (excluding its OEM business) grew its enterprise revenue 8,5% year-over-year in 1Q13, which was below the overall market. As a result, Aruba now holds 10,5% of the enterprise WLAN market, down from 11,5% in 1Q12.
* HP’s overall enterprise WLAN revenue increased 12,4% year-over-year in 1Q13, a notable improvement in annual growth compared to HP’s results for the last few quarters. As a result, HP’s market share increased slightly to 5,4% in 1Q13, up from 5,1% in 1Q12.
Ruckus grew a solid 24% year-over-year in 1Q13, well above the overall market, although this does reflect noticeable deceleration of year-over-year growth for Ruckus compared to previous quarters.