According to a report from Dell’Oro Group, H3C was the first major manufacturer to recognise revenues for commercially available, enterprise-class WiFi 7 Access Points (APs) as the overall Wireless LAN market grew to nearly $3-billion during the second quarter of 2023.
The two industry leaders, Cisco and HPE, together, gained 5 points in four-quarter trailing market share.
“This is the seventh consecutive quarter of double-digit YoY growth for the enterprise-class WLAN industry,” says Siân Morgan, research director at Dell’Oro Group. “Pent-up demand for digital transformation, an appetite for the new 6GHz frequency band, and loosening supply constraints are creating the perfect conditions for rapid revenue expansion.
“Future results will be affected by a geographic divergence in new technology adoption,” says Morgan. “The vendors in China have taken an early lead in developing WiFi 7 APs. Outside China, adoption of WiFi 6E is expanding, but still only represents 7% of the Indoor APs being shipped. The adoption of more devices supporting the 6E standard, further harmonisation of worldwide regulations, and approval of Standard Power APs in the US should help accelerate WiFi 6E revenues.
“We are watching these trends closely as we expect market conditions to become more competitive in 2024,” Morgan adds.
Additional highlights from the Q2 2023 Wireless LAN Quarterly Report include:
* Revenues were fueled by both higher unit shipments and higher YoY prices.
* Manufacturers are predicting different rates of backlog decline, meaning revenues could be choppy in 2024.
* In Q2 2023, Public Cloud Managed revenues bypassed $1-billion for the first time.
* More vendors are expected to begin selling WiFi 7 APs later this year.