Worldwide WLAN Market Shows Slowing Growth in First Quarter of 2014, According to IDC

The FINANCIAL — The combined consumer and enterprise worldwide wireless local area network (WLAN) market segments increased 7.0% year over year in the first quarter of 2014 (1Q14). The enterprise segment continued to grow at a healthy rate and increased 10.3% over the same period last year, according to International Data Corporation (IDC).

While the pace of the enterprise WLAN market growth has been steadily decreasing over the last several quarters, the market continues to be one of the faster growing networking market segments. The consumer WLAN market also had a stable quarter in 1Q14 and grew 3.8% year over year. The growth in the consumer WLAN space benefited from the ongoing transition from the older 802.11n standard to the newer and faster 802.11ac standard as well as a solid performance in emerging markets.

"WLAN infrastructure continues to be a bright spot in the networking market, with mobility and cloud driving investments and refresh cycles across geographies and verticals," said Rohit Mehra, Vice President, Network Infrastructure, at IDC. "While a stabilizing growth rate suggests the market maturing, new vertical-specific use cases and the ramping adoption of the emerging 802.11ac standard will fuel sustained growth in the enterprise WLAN market for the foreseeable future," Mehra added.

From a geographic perspective, the enterprise WLAN market performed especially well in Latin America with its 33.3% year-over-year growth in 1Q14. Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) region followed with a 12.1% year-over-year increase. Asia/Pacific grew just under 10% at 9.9% year over year and North America grew below the overall market level at 7.7% year over year, according to IDC.

"Although some of the leading vendors experienced flattening revenues in the first quarter, growth in the worldwide enterprise WLAN market will remain strong as technological evolutions drive network upgrades as well as greenfield deployments," said Petr Jirovsky, Research Manager, Worldwide Networking Trackers.