WLAN a $1.7 billion market in Q3 of 2011

FRAMINGHAM, USA: International Data Corp. (IDC) announced third quarter results and recent enhancements to its Worldwide Quarterly WLAN Tracker, which covers the enterprise and consumer wireless local area network (WLAN) market. The Worldwide Quarterly WLAN Tracker provides quarterly market size and vendor share data for key WLAN market technologies with data now available for eight major regions and 52 countries.

Results from the third quarter of 2011 (3Q11) again showed strong growth with worldwide revenues growing 23.9 percent year over year to nearly $1.7 billion (excluding WLAN NICs). In the enterprise WLAN market, revenues grew 32.6 percent year over year to $812.9 million, which now accounts for 49 percent of the total WLAN market.

"Enterprise mobility and BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) have become one of the most visible and key priorities for CIOs and IT managers, and the continued growth of the enterprise WLAN market in 2011 is a clear testament to that market dynamic," said Rohit Mehra, director, Enterprise Communications Infrastructure, at IDC. "The tremendous momentum behind smart-phones and tablets and their continued uptake in the enterprise in conjunction with mobile and cloud-based apps are motivating IT to reassess their network infrastructure needs, and that bodes well for network equipment vendors."

From a regional perspective, the overall WLAN market grew fastest in the Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan)(APeJ) region with a 36.1 percent year-over-year increase. However, the 21.8 percent growth in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and the 19.9 percent increase in the Americas also reflected market strength in these regions. China is now the second largest country by revenue in the WLAN market, with 3Q11 revenues of $147.4 million, behind the United States ($627.9 million) and ahead of Germany ($127.1 million) and Japan ($87.6 million).

"China is benefiting from strong growth in both the enterprise and consumer segments," noted Petr Jirovský, senior research analyst, Worldwide Network Tracker Research.

Key enterprise WLAN vendor updates
Cisco's worldwide 3Q11 enterprise WLAN revenue grew a healthy 23.1 percent year over year and 10.9 percent over 2Q11 to surpass $400 million, a new record for a single quarter. The US market accounted for 50 percent of Cisco's worldwide WLAN revenue in 3Q11. Cisco's worldwide market share now stands at 49.7 percent, up from 48 percent in 2Q11, but down from 53.5 percent a year ago.

Aruba (including its OEM business with Alcatel-Lucent) increased 70.2 percent year over year and now holds 14 percent of the enterprise WLAN market. Aruba is seeing benefits from its collaboration with Alcatel-Lucent (and Alcatel Shanghai Bell in China in particular), as it has been able to ink deals with the top three China mobile operators to provide WLAN equipment for mobile offload. Aruba's $8.5 million in sales of Aruba-branded products to China Mobile this quarter were particularly noteworthy.

HP's 3Q11 enterprise WLAN revenue grew 27.8 percent year over year and 4.9 percent quarter over quarter after a strong 2Q11. China remains the largest contributor to HP's WLAN business with 38.8 percent of its total revenues, with the US contributing 23.2 percent in 3Q11.

Ruckus also had a very good quarter in 3Q11 with a sequential revenue increase of 40.6 percent and 84.2 percent growth year over year. Ruckus is also seeing benefits from a number of its recent deals with service providers that are deploying Ruckus' WLAN equipment for mobile offload, in addition to its enterprise deployments.

The consumer class WLAN market also enjoyed solid gains in 3Q11 after a strong prior quarter, growing 16.6 percent year over year to reach $847.7 million in revenues.

Netgear was the strong performer in this segment, growing 33.3 percent year over year, while D-Link grew 15.7 percent year over year. TP-Link's strength in the consumer WLAN market in both EMEA and APeJ resulted in 40.4 percent growth compared to the second quarter of 2011. Cisco's Linksys underperformed in this segment, with a year-over-year increase of 0.7 percent, although it grew 8.2 percent quarter over quarter.