Enterprise WLAN market grew 19% — MobileMonday Global: Industry News

^{VoIP drives sales} Enterprise WLAN market grew 19%

1 Jan 2007 at 09:28 GMT Timo Poropudas

Enterprise wireless local area network sales grew 19 percent sequentially in the third quarter of 2006 to USD 392.1 million, according to a report from Synergy Research Group.

The overall corporate market is being driven by demand for applications such as voice-over-WiFi, guest-access networks, and location services, Synergy says.

The enterprise market leader is still Cisco with a 60.9 percent share of the market, according to an article on Unstrung site. The networking giant grew 29 percent sequentially from USD 189 million in the second quarter to USD 238 million in the third.

Second position vendor is Symbol Technologies, which is currently in the process of being acquired by Motorola. Symbol’s sales were up just one percent at USD 36 million quarter-on-quarter. In third place, WiFi startup Aruba Wireless Networks grew 17 percent sequentially from USD 23 million to USD 27 million.

HP’s ProCurve unit once again showed rapid growth. The firm’s WiFi revenues at USD 7.7 million were up 56 percent on the previous quarter.

Synergy says that the growth in demand for applications such as voice-over-WiFi will continue to help to fuel this enterprise WLAN boom. It estimates that corporate WiFi VoIP phones accounted for nearly USD 10 million in sales in the second quarter.

The consumer market represents just over half the total market grew five percent quarter-on-quarter to USD 553.5 million. Synergy says that the market continues to be driven by faster home WiFi.