WLAN Mkt 2Q11 Revenue Reaches $1.5 Billion

In the second quarter of 2011 (2Q11), the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Wireless LAN Tracker found year-over-year revenue growth of 29.7%, reaching $1.52 billion (excluding WLAN NICs). The global WLAN market also experienced strong sequential growth, with total revenue increasing 13.4% over the first quarter of 2011. The enterprise WLAN market segment had one of its best quarters of year-over-year performance, with revenues growing 43.4% to nearly $725 million, and also growing sequentially by 21.9%.

“Enterprise mobility has emerged as one of the key priorities for CIOs and IT managers across all geographies, and the growth of WLAN market revenues during the second quarter is a clear testament to that market dynamic,” said Rohit Mehra, director, Enterprise Communications Infrastructure, at IDC. “The tremendous momentum behind smart mobile devices and their continued uptake in the enterprise for business and vertical-specific applications are driving enterprises to move forward with upgrades and extensions of their wireless networks.”

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Specifically, 802.11n deployments in the enterprise reached 79.1% of revenues and 66.6% of unit shipments, showing a surprisingly high continued uptake in some geographic and other segments for legacy 802.11 devices. However, the trend towards 802.11n becoming the de facto wireless standard stays intact.

The retail-class WLAN market also showed good growth in 2Q11 after a strong prior quarter, growing 19.4% year over year to reach $800 million, and growing 6.6% sequentially. Netgear was the strong performer is this segment, doubling its revenue year over year to reach nearly $200 million, while D-Link also grew year over year by 18.6%. Cisco’s Linksys underperformed in this segment, with a year over year decline of 21.4%.

Key Enterprise WLAN Vendor Updates

• Cisco’s 2Q11 enterprise WLAN revenue grew a healthy 36.2% year over year, and 11.9% sequentially, however its market share decreased to just over 50%.

• Aruba (including its OEM business) increased 8.6% sequentially after a very good 1Q11, but had a strong 52.2% year over year growth.

• HP’s 2Q11 enterprise WLAN revenue grew a strong 65.8% year over year and 35.9% sequentially after a weaker first quarter

• MSI (Motorola Solutions) 2Q11 enterprise WLAN revenue, after several lackluster quarters, increased a healthy 52.7% year over year with a market leading sequential growth of 112.8%