* Market numbers on WLANs, WiMAX
With heat and hype at high levels, the wireless portion of the LAN market gets examined six ways from Sunday. The latest research looks at wireless LAN switches, as well as WLANs in relation to WiMAX.
Forward Concepts published a study of WLAN and WiMAX. The research firm says WiMAX-related equipment will go from a mere $72 million market this year to more than $2 billion by 2009.
WiMAX is a wireless technology for longer distances than you can get with WLANs, and Forward Concepts says it is complementary to both Wi-Fi (WLANs) and 3G cellular technologies. For example, WiMAX might provide a backbone for Wi-Fi hot spots.
Meanwhile, Infonetics Research reports that the number of WLAN switch ports shipped worldwide shot up 52% from the first to the second quarter of 2005, to 170,000. Revenue grew 55%, $80.8 million.
Infonetics says annual revenue in that market area ought to exceed $735 million by 2008.
This market is not to be confused with the overall WLAN equipment market, which actually slipped 1% to $733 million in the second quarter. Unit shipments were up 7% from the prior quarter.
Cisco leads the overall WLAN equipment market. Infonetics notes that the company has had four consecutive quarters with revenue over $100 million. In second place is Cisco-Linksys (measured separately, apparently), followed by D-Link and Netgear.
Access points account for 67% of WLAN equipment revenue. Network interface cards account for 16% – and the rest is in WLAN infrastructure products.
