The enterprise worldwide wireless local area network (WLAN) market grew 3,2% in the fourth quarter of 2024 (4Q24) compared to 4Q23 to reach $2,6-billion.
For the full year, in 2024, the enterprise WLAN market declined 12,7% year-over-year (YoY), finishing at $9,4-billion, according to results published in the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly WLAN Tracker.
Annualised growth in the fourth quarter builds on sequential growth of 4.8% between the third and fourth quarters of 2024, and growth of 5,8% between the second and third quarters of 2024. This pattern indicates that the market’s supply and demand dynamics are stabilising after two years of volatility driven largely by the drawdown of backlogged product orders stemming from the Covid-19-era global supply chain crisis.
Meanwhile, the latest WiFi standards are driving growth in the enterprise WLAN market. WiFi 6E, which enables WiFi to utilise the 6 GHz band of unlicensed spectrum, accounted for 29% of dependent access point market segment revenues in 4Q24.
That’s compared to making up 22,5% of the segment’s revenues a year earlier. WiFi 7 adoption increased in the fourth quarter too, making up 10,2% of the dependent AP segment’s revenues in 4Q24, growing from 4.9% of dependent AP revenues in 3Q24.
From a geographical perspective, in the Americas, the enterprise WLAN market increased 6,1% YoY in 4Q24, but declined 16,7% for the full year. In the US, a strong fourth quarter (7,1% YoY growth) did not offset declines from earlier in the year, leading to a full year decline of 17,3% YoY.
In the combined region of Europe, Middle East & Africa, a similar pattern played out: The enterprise WLAN market grew 8,2% YoY in the fourth quarter and declined 9,3% for the full year.
In the Asia Pacific region, fourth quarter revenues declined 6,9% on an annual basis, while full year revenues dropped 8,8% YoY. In the People’s Republic of China, the market declined 20,1% YoY in 4Q24 and declined 14,2% for the full year.
“In Enterprise WLAN, the fourth quarter of 2024 continued its growth momentum from the previous quarter, reinforcing the importance of this critically important enterprise connectivity technology. The decline in full year 2024 market revenues was not indicative of weakness in the market, but rather unusual supply chain and backlog drawdown issues from 2023, which led to historically elevated growth rates,” says Brandon Butler, senior research manager: Enterprise Networks at IDC.
“The strength in the second half of the year was driven by new WiFi standards like WiFi 6E and WiFi 7 being adopted, along with advanced, AI-driven management capabilities for optimising WLAN engineering and operations being available.”
Results from notable enterprise WLAN vendors include:
- Cisco’s enterprise WLAN revenues rose 2,8% YoY in 4Q24 but declined 19.1% for the full year to finish at $3,7-billion. Cisco’s market share stood at 39,5% to end 2024.
- HPE Aruba Networking revenues grew 17,9% YoY in 4Q24 but declined 8.3% for the full year, finishing at $1,4-billion in 2024 revenues and giving the company 15,2% market share to end the year.
- Huawei enterprise WLAN revenues declined 6,2% YoY in 4Q24 and fell 1.6% for the full year. Huawei’s 2024 revenues of $851-million gave the company 9% market share to end the year.
- Ubiquiti enterprise WLAN revenues increased 39,3% YoY in 4Q24 and rose 20,5% for the full year, giving the company $800-million in full year revenue and 8,5% market share.
- Juniper Networks enterprise WLAN revenues increased 13,6% YoY in 4Q24 and rose 9,6% for the full year 2024, giving the company market share of 5,1% on $484-million in annual revenue.