According to a recently published report from Dell’Oro Group, the trusted source for market information about the telecommunications, security, networks, and data center industries, enterprise class Wireless LAN (WLAN) revenues defied gravity in the fourth quarter of 2022, hitting a record $3 Billion, with a marked contraction in sales to China. Cisco shipped more WLAN units than it ever has, thanks to supply constraints which are improving, if not fully resolved.
“There were over 10 Million enterprise class WLAN units shipped worldwide in 4Q 2022 – that’s the most ever,” said Siân Morgan, Wireless LAN Research Director at Dell’Oro Group. “Two-thirds of the major vendors surpassed their highest levels of shipment volumes. However, Huawei saw a big shift in the company’s geographic distribution of revenues – with the most growth in sales coming from EMEA and CALA, not China. On top of skyrocketing shipments, average WLAN prices continued to climb, bringing the worldwide enterprise class market to $9.4 Billion for 2022. We are well on our way to surpassing $10 Billion in 2023 industry revenues.
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“All of the major vendors outside China still have unusually high backlogs. As the last of the supply constraints loosen, manufacturers’ ability to fulfill the outstanding Wireless LAN orders will keep improving. As a consequence, the trajectory of year-over-year growth is expected to extend into the first half of 2023,” added Morgan.
Additional highlights from the 4Q 2022 Wireless LAN Quarterly Report:
- – Average unit prices, heavily influenced by product mixes, are expected to peak in 2023.
- – Public Cloud managed solutions are still taking market share from Premises and Private Cloud managed solutions, although the growth gap narrowed in 4Q 2022.
- – Wi-Fi 6 access points continue to increase their penetration of the market, but have not yet peaked in adoption rate.
- – While regulators and industry participants are finalizing their positions on the use of the 6 GHz band leading up to the World Radiocommunications Conference (WRC’23) in Dubai, enterprise class Wi-Fi 6E adoption is lagging that of previous technologies.
- – The first enterprise class Wi-Fi 7 access point has been advertised, and enterprises are already placing their orders for the new technology.