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International Data Corp.: Worldwide WLAN Market Grows 9.2% Year- over-Year in 2Q [Health & Beauty Close - Up](Health & Beauty Close - Up Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) International Data Corp. (IDC) said that the combined consumer and enterprise worldwide wireless local area network (WLAN) market segments grew 9.2 percent year over year in the second quarter of 2014 (2Q14). In its release, the Company said that the preliminary results published in the IDC Worldwide Quarterly WLAN Tracker find that the enterprise segment continued to grow at a steady rate and increased 7.7 percent over the same period last year. IDC said that 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 transition from the 802.11n standard to the newer and faster 802.11ac standard is progressing rapidly and above expectations in the enterprise segment. After just four quarters of product availability, the 802.11ac standard already accounts for 19 percent of dependent access point shipments and 30 percent of dependent access point revenues, a noticeably faster adoption rate than what the market experienced with the 802.11a/b/g to 802.11n transition several years ago. The primary reasons behind this trend lies with aggressive pricing for the 802.11ac access points adopted by most vendors with minimal or no price premium over the 802.11n products and to the inherent benefits of 802.11ac products in high density environments. The consumer WLAN market had a very good quarter in 2Q14, growing 10.9 percent year over year. The gains in the consumer WLAN space benefitted 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, particularly in Asia/Pacific where China, as the second largest consumer WLAN market (behind the United States), jumped 36.9 percent year over year in revenue and a massive 81.3 percent in unit shipments. "The continued worldwide growth of WLAN across different verticals and use cases demonstrates WLAN's importance to today's enterprise, as it supports a growing number of business-critical mobility applications," said Rohit Mehra, Vice President, Network Infrastructure, at IDC. "While growth has stabilized, enterprise requirements around mobility and cloud applications, as well as the emergence of the Internet of Things, are driving network upgrades and greenfield deployments. This, along with the rapid uptake of the 802.11ac standard, will help sustain WLAN market growth in the near to mid-term." From a geographic perspective, the enterprise WLAN market performed especially well in Latin America with its 35.4 percent year-over-year growth in 2Q14. Leading the charge in the region were Brazil (up 61.5 percent year over year) and Argentina (up 51.3 percent year over year). The Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) region followed with a solid increase of 20.7 percent year over year that was spread relatively evenly across the region including good performances in the large economies of Western Europe. Notable year-over-year increases in this region included France (up 33.4 percent in 2Q14), the United Kingdom (24.9 percent), Spain (22.9 percent), and Italy (12.1 percent). The Asia/Pacific enterprise WLAN market grew more modestly at 10.5 percent year over year due to weakness in Korea (down -15.8 percent year over year) and Indonesia (-29.3 percent). Still, other major Asia/Pacific countries performed well in 2Q14 with China growing 13.6 percent, Japan adding 16.2 percent, and Australia increasing by 12.5 percent year over year in 2Q14. North America, on the other hand, declined -1.2 percent year over year in 2Q14. "Although growth was flat for some of the traditionally strong vendors and regions in 2Q14, the worldwide enterprise WLAN market remains strong as technological innovations, along with increasing network demands, drive investments in network infrastructure," said Petr Jirovsky, Research Manager, Worldwide Networking Trackers. Key Enterprise WLAN Vendor Updates -Cisco's 2Q14 worldwide enterprise WLAN revenue underperformed the overall market and was down -2.3 percent, despite growing 11.2 percent quarter over quarter after the seasonally weaker 1Q14. Cisco's performance was impacted by relative weakness in the service provider vertical in North America and Asia/Pacific. Cisco's worldwide market share stands at 46.8 percent in 2Q14, down from 48.1 percent in 1Q14 and 51.6 percent in 2Q13. -Aruba (excluding its OEM business) had a very strong quarter in 2Q14, growing 19.1 percent year over year and 12.5 percent sequentially on strength across its product portfolio, including the 802.11ac and Aruba Instant product line. Aruba's market share increased to 11.8 percent of the enterprise WLAN market, up from the 10.6 percent in 2Q13. -Ruckus also significantly outperformed the overall enterprise WLAN market after growing 27.7 percent year over year and 7.4 percent quarter over quarter in 2Q14. Ruckus now accounts for 6.2 percent of the overall market, up from 5.3 percent in 2Q13. -HP's 2Q14 revenue underperformed the overall market and decreased -17.5 percent year over year despite growing 15.4 percent quarter over quarter. As a result, HP's market share dropped to 4.5 percent of the market from 5.8 percent in 2Q13. The IDC Worldwide Quarterly WLAN Tracker provides total market size and vendor share data in an Excel pivot table format. More Information and Complete Details: www.idc.com http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS25077714 ((Comments on this story may be sent to [email protected])) (c) 2014 ProQuest Information and Learning Company; All Rights Reserved. |