Telecom Lead India: Networking major Cisco is continuing
to lead the global wireless LAN market in 2011 with near 50 percent market
share. Aruba has strengthened its 2nd place position in 2011, while HP and
Motorola continue to battle it out for 3rd.
Cisco experienced significant competitive pressure across
its product portfolio in 2011, and the wireless LAN market was no exception.
(Please see the Infonetics chart at the end of article)
Infonetics Research said the WLAN equipment market
revenue touched $893 million in Q4 2011, up 1 percent over $880 million in Q3
2011.
Sales of wireless LAN equipment have been on a strong
double-digit year-over-year growth trajectory for 9 consecutive quarters.
Demand for wireless LAN equipment sales was well balanced
across the major world regions, all posting 20 percent+ annual growth.
Access point (AP) shipments grew stronger than revenue in
2011, jumping 32 percent and crossing the 7 million unit mark.
802.11n APs now make up about 75 percent of all AP sales.
Due mainly to declining prices, the growth rate of the
WLAN market is expected to slow, but pick back up in 2015 with the adoption of
802.11ac technology.
While the bulk of expenditures still goes toward wired
Ethernet switches, and will for some time to come, the growth is coming from
wireless networking gear, up 24 percent in 2011, compared to flat sales for
Ethernet switches.
With wireless taking up an ever-larger share of the
expenditure pie, vendors must have a well-developed wireless strategy to
address the evolving requirements of their customers,” said Matthias
Machowinski, directing analyst for enterprise networks and video at Infonetics
Research.
