Overall WLAN revenues shrivel in late 2008

[This is repost of a news story elsewhere on our site]

The wireless LAN market shriveled at the end of 2008, according to new, if sketchy, data released by Infonetics.

The Boston-based market researcher says worldwide WLAN equipment revenues dropped 11% in Q4 compared to the previous quarter. For the year, revenues fell 4% to $2.4 billion worldwide.

Two vendors who apparently saw revenue increases were Motorola and D-Link, though Infonetics didn’t provide specifics. The research firm says Motorola is very close behind second-place Aruba.

Cisco still dominates overall, with 52% of total global WLAN equipment revenues, or just over $1 billion. Infonetics didn’t indicate if that percentage has been trending up or down, however.

Despite the overall decline, revenues for WLAN controllers/switches and their associated “dependent access points” saw strong increases, quarter to quarter: controller revenue grew 32%, the dependent access points by 12% in Q4.

The revenue squeeze will continue through 2009, the report concludes. Infonectics projects very modest revenue growth from $2.4 billion in 2008 to roughly $2.6 billion in 2013. And that’s despite the reports assertion that “many enterprise buyers are looking at upgrading and expanding their wireless infrastructure,” in many cases to 802.11n.

Here's how that anemic project looks:

Check out our large-scale Clear Choice test of enterprise 802.11n WLAN products: only 4 vendors were willing to be tested.

You can find and compare enterprise and SMB WLAN products in our online Wireless & Mobile Product Guides.

• Wireless / Mobile
• Aruba
• Cisco
• infonetics
• market
• Motorola
• revenues
• WLAN