Worldwide sales of wireless LAN equipment totalled $1.68 billion during 2002, according to a new study from Infonetics Research.
The company admitted that the hardware sector has not grown as quickly as anticipated but is confident that new innovations will stimulate the market. It is estimated that consumers make up 50% of wireless LAN equipment revenue with businesses accounting for 41% and service providers the remaining 9%. North America is the dominant market with a 58% share of total sales.
“There have been several consecutive quarters of steady WLAN growth, but it it has not been as explosive as might be expected,” said Richard Webb, chief analyst of the report. “White collar enterprises, a major potential market, still need some convincing on security and network control issues. However, we are seeing a great deal of activity from a new breed of vendors creating the security and switching support infrastructure that could drive WLAN firmly into the enterprise mainstream.”
Infonetics predicts that the WLAN hardware market will experience steady growth over the next few years and will be worth $2.7 billion by 2006.
