The combined consumer and enterprise worldwide wireless local area network (WLAN) market segments rose 7.1% year over year in 2Q20, according to IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Wireless LAN Tracker, although the enterprise segment declined 9.5% year over year in 2Q20 with $1.4 billion in revenue. IDC attributes the decline to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the enterprise WLAN market.
Some highlights from IDC:
- Revenues for the enterprise class of WLAN infrastructure have now declined 6.1% in the first half of 2020 compared to the same period a year earlier.
- Wi-Fi 6-enabled dependent access points (APs) made up 28.9% of revenues, up from 21.8% in the first quarter of 2020 and indicating significant adoption of the newest WLAN standard in the enterprise market.
- Wi-Fi 6 units accounted for 16.8% of shipments, up from 11.8% in the previous quarter. The Wi-Fi 5 standard (802.11ac) still makes up the majority of dependent AP shipments (75.6%) and revenues (69.4%). Overall unit shipments in the enterprise WLAN market fell 6.4% compared to 2Q19.
- The consumer WLAN market grew 20.3% year over year in 2Q20. W
- ithin the consumer market, 60.2% of shipments and 73.7% of revenues were for 802.11ac products.
- 802.11ax units made up 3.6% of shipments and 9.5% of revenues, showing the slow adoption of Wi-Fi 6 in the consumer market.
- APs supporting the older 802.11n standard still made up 36.2% of unit shipments and 16.8% of revenues.
- Cisco's enterprise WLAN revenues decreased 10.9% year over year in 2Q20 to $626 million. In the first half of 2020, Cisco's revenues are down 8.9% compared to the first half of 2019. Cisco remains the market share leader, finishing the quarter with 44.3% share, down from 45.7% in 1Q20.
- HPE-Aruba revenues fell 17.1% year over year in 2Q20 and the company's market share stood at 12.8%.
- Ubiquiti enterprise WLAN revenues fell 5.0% year over year. The company's market share was 7.1%, down from 9.5% in the previous quarter.
- CommScope (formerly ARRIS/Ruckus) revenues declined 22.8% year over year in 2Q20. The company held 4.9% market share in the quarter.
- Huawei's revenues rose 2.5% year over year in 2Q20 and its market share rose to 6.1% from 3.8% in the previous quarter (1Q20).
"Organizations around the globe were forced to rapidly adjust their operations in response to the COVID-19 outbreak, leading some organizations to pause investments in WLAN equipment," says Brandon Butler, senior research analyst, Network Infrastructure. "Wireless connectivity can play an important role in the new normal operations of enterprises though. From providing connectivity for cloud-based and communication applications, to enabling the ability to alert and enforce social distancing rules, IDC believes wireless networking will remain an important part of enterprise IT buying plans in the coming years."
