Enterprise wireless LAN (WLAN) revenues grew 48% YoY in the first quarter of 2023 fueled by high shipment volumes and increasing prices, says Dell’Oro Group, adding that some vendors reported backlogs coming down faster than anticipated.
“The enterprise-class WLAN industry has not seen such a long stretch of YoY revenue growth in 10 years,” says Siân Morgan, wireless LAN research director at Dell’Oro Group. “But new orders are declining from the peaks of last year.
“Sky-high revenues are being fueled by the release of accumulated backlogs and our analysis shows that this may be hiding a reduction in IT spending, with a digestion period right around the corner.
“Across the world, revenue growth varied by geography,” adds Morgan. “North America has added nearly half-a-billion dollars to the WLAN market, while the slowest growth has been in China. Huawei has seen a considerable shift in the geographic distribution of its WLAN revenues.”
Additional highlights from the 1Q 2023 Wireless LAN Quarterly Report include:
* Average unit prices continued their YoY growth streak, but are projected to start declining.
* Outdoor WLAN revenues grew as a percentage of the industry, supported by government initiatives.
* Public Cloud managed solutions are taking market share from Premises and Private Cloud managed solutions.
* WiFi 6E Access Point shipments increased, but adoption is still lagging that of previous technologies such as WiFi 6 or WiFi 5.
* Meanwhile, WiFi 7 APs have been announced by vendors in China and discussed in one North American vendors’ earnings call.