Wireless LAN (WLAN) revenue is expected to grow 11% in 2025 after the 2024 contraction finally comes to an end, according to Dell’Oro Group, with WiFi 7 adoption shooting up and representing over a third of Indoor AP revenues.
“The growth of WiFi 7 shipments has been quite dramatic in 2Q and 3Q 2024,” says Siân Morgan, research director at Dell’Oro Group. “We expect WiFi 7 adoption to continue on this upward trend – shipments of the new technology should overtake shipments of WiFi 6E by mid-2025.
“In North American and Europe, we are seeing WLAN vendors’ software revenues escalate,” adds Morgan. “This is expected to continue over the next five years, contributing to a divergence in price with China.”
Additional highlights from the report include:
- AIOps features are being delivered to customers, promising to lighten the load of enterprise network operations and delivering higher revenue per installed AP.
- Revenues of Public Cloud-Managed WLAN will grow faster than the overall market over the next five years.
- Wi-Fi 7 ASPs were unusually low in 2024, but the dynamic will change in 2025 and beyond.
- Despite difficult macro-economic conditions in China, WLAN revenues are expected to grow in that region.
- The first AP shipments of the standard to be known as WiFi 8 are expected in 2028 and will be focused on increasing reliability instead of expanding capacity.