Worldwide Enterprise WLAN Market Continues Strong Growth, Increasing Revenues 34% YoY in 3Q22

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Fueled by the continued adoption of the latest Wi-Fi standards and an easing of supply chain constraints, the enterprise segment of the worldwide wireless local area network (WLAN) market increased revenues 34.3% year over year in the third quarter of 2022 (3Q22) to $2.6 billion, according to results published in the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Wireless LAN Tracker. The 34.3% annualized growth in 3Q22 builds on the market's 20.4% year-over-year growth in the second quarter of 2022. Through the first three quarters of 2022, the enterprise WLAN market is up 24.5% compared to 2021.

A new Wi-Fi standard was added to the WLAN Tracker in 3Q22: Wi-Fi 6E, an iterative advancement of the Wi-Fi 6 standard. Wi-Fi 6E expands Wi-Fi's use to the 6 GHz band of spectrum, whereas previous Wi-Fi standards used the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands. In 3Q22, Wi-Fi 6E made up 4.8% of the market revenues for dependent access points (AP), marking the beginning of enterprise adoption of the standard. Wi-Fi 6 made up the vast balance (79.7%) of dependent AP revenues.

The consumer segment of the WLAN market increased 2.4% year over year in 3Q22, with the quarter's unit shipments declining 13.2% compared to the third quarter of 2021. Adoption of Wi-Fi 6 continues in the consumer segment of the WLAN market as well. In 3Q22, Wi-Fi 6 made up 38.1% of the market's revenues.

"A variety of factors continue to drive growth in the enterprise WLAN market. Perhaps most importantly, the global shortage of various infrastructure components and log-jammed supply chains are showing signs of easing, allowing networking vendors to convert record-large backlogs into revenue and giving enterprise customers access to the latest Wi-Fi technology," said Brandon Butler, research manager, Enterprise Netwo r k s, IDC. "Meanwhile, new Wi-Fi standards are encouraging enterprise adoption of WLAN technology, notably the emergence of Wi-Fi in the 6 GHz spectrum via Wi-Fi 6E."

The enterprise WLAN market had generally strong results across the globe. In the United States, the market increased 38.6% annually, while in Canada the market rose 27.9% year over year; in Latin America the market grew 3.5% from a year earlier. In Western Europe, the market increased 59.1%, but in Central and Eastern Europe, the market declined 12.0%. In the Middle East & Africa, the market rose 39.9%. In the Asia/Pacific region, excluding Japan and China, the market rose 40.5%, while in the China (PRC) the market increased 16.9% year over year and in Japan the market rose 15.9%.

3Q22 Company Highlights

Cisco's enterprise WLAN revenues increased 29.8% in 3Q22 to $1.0 billion and increased 32.4% on a sequential basis from 2Q22 to 3Q22. The company’s market share stood at 39.7% in 3Q22, compared to a market share of 37.7% in 2Q22.

HPE-Aruba revenues rose 76.6% year over year in 3Q22 and rose 29.0% sequentially, giving the company market share of 15.3%, up from 14.9% in the previous quarter.

Ubiquiti enterprise WLAN revenues increased 19.2% year over year in 3Q22 and rose 14.0% sequentially, giving the company 7.2% market share in the quarter, down from 7.9% in 2Q22.

Huawei enterprise WLAN revenues rose 6.7% year over year in 3Q22 and declined 9.3% from 2Q22 to 3Q22, giving the company 6.1% market share, down from 8.5% in 2Q22.

H3C revenues increased 0.7% in 3Q22, and increased 17.7% sequentially, giving the company market share of 4.3%, down slightly from the 4.6% share in 2Q22.