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%.
IDC director of Enterprise Communications Infrastructure, Rohit Mehra said 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.
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.
However, the trend towards 802.11n becoming the de facto wireless standard stays intact, IDC said. The retail-class WLAN market has experienced a growth 19.4% year-over-year to reach $800m, 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%.
Cisco‘s 2Q11 enterprise WLAN revenue grew 36.2% year over year, and 11.9% sequentially, however its market share decreased to just over 50%, the tracker stated.
Aruba (including its OEM business) increased 8.6 percent sequentially after a very good 1Q11, but had a strong 52.2 percent year over year growth.
HP‘s 2Q11 enterprise WLAN revenue grew a strong 65.8 percent year over year and 35.9 percent sequentially after a weaker first quarter.
MSI (Motorola Solutions) 2Q11 enterprise WLAN revenue, after several lackluster quarters, increased a healthy 52.7 percent year over year with a market leading sequential growth of 112.8 percent.
The statistics above tell us that Cisco is the member who benefits little while Enterprise WLAN Market is growing. Netgear gained most in the strong growth of the wireless LAN market.
