* Infonetics Research study shows rapid growth in voice over Wi-Fi
Just how hot is voice over wireless LANs? It’s so hot that Infonetics Research is projecting the worldwide market for Wi-Fi phones to more than double every year through 2009.
The worldwide Wi-Fi phone market shot up 116% between 2004 and 2005, to $125.5 million, the research firm says. This year, Infonetics expects the market to more than double again, as both enterprise companies and consumers deploy voice over WLANs.
The result in 2009 will be a market at $3.7 billion, Infonetics says.
Currently, SpectraLink leads the overall Wi-Fi phone market, followed by Cisco and Motorola.
The research firm says that the technology of voice over WLANs is moving beyond its roots as an enterprise application, and will become more popular with consumers as service providers bundle it with their VoIP services and broadband Internet connections. D-Link, Linksys and Netgear are all launching products that will be aimed at consumers, Infonetics says.
But a lot of the growth is actually coming from dual-mode cellular/Wi-Fi phones, as service providers ramp up dual-mode services as part of fixed-mobile convergence strategies.
Last year, 58% of Wi-Fi phone revenue came from single-mode Wi-Fi VoIP handsets, with the rest coming from dual-mode handsets. By 2009, 91% of revenue is expected to come from dual-mode handsets.
Geographically, Infonetics says today’s dual-mode handset revenue is coming mostly from the Asia Pacific region, but by 2009 the region of Europe, the Middle East and Africa will be generating much more revenue.
This research is a kind of update to a study that Infonetics conducted last year, in which the firm concluded that use of voice over WLANs would triple in two years.
