Strong Growth of Enterprise WLAN Market in 2023 Q1 

The International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Wireless LAN Tracker has reported that between the first quarter of 2022 and Q1 of 2023, the Enterprise Wi-Fi market has grown by 43%. 

What’s Behind the Growth of the Enterprise WLAN Market?

The driving force behind the Enterprise WLAN market growth is in part down to the easing of component shortages. 

There has also been a significant demand for the upgrades and expansions that come with Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E. 

You can find further details on this in IDC’s latest market report. 

Wi-Fi Market Back With a Vengeance

Previously, the right business to be in might have been as a service provider or consumer Wi-Fi. But we’ve come a long way since 2020, and from just last year even. The IDC reports that the consumer Wi-Fi segment has decreased by 8.8% for the quarter year-on-year.

The enterprise Wi-Fi market however is back and booming and showing itself to continue to grow year-on-year. 

The IDC’s recent report showed that the Enterprise Wi-Fi market grew by 43% in Q1 for 2023 (year on year). This sector is worth a huge 2.8 billion dollars. 

Is the Growth of Enterprise WLAN Market Down to Wi-Fi 6?

Of the Enterprise WLAN sector revenue, Wi-Fi 6 made up 78.6%. 

In addition to that, the adoption of Wi-Fi 6E is up by 14% from that last quarter of 2022. This continued growth has taken a 10.4% share of the AP market in Q1 of 2023. 

Cisco Expands Market Dominance

At the end of the first quarter of 2023, Cisco continued to take their Enterprise Wi-Fi market share with 47.1%. Their revenue has risen 62.7% year on year – Their Enterprise Wi-Fi revenue for this quarter was 1.3 billion US dollars. 

Also doing well in the Enterprise Wi-Fi market is HPE_Aruba (Aruba Networks). They have grown by 39.5% year on year for Q1 of 2023. The IDC reports they have a market share of 16%. 

You can check out how other vendors are doing by heading to the IDC website here

What is Wi-Fi 7 and When Will We Have It? 

Things move fast in the world of tech. We might only just be connecting to Wi-Fi 6, yet Wi-Fi 7 is already hovering in the background ready to arrive on the scene and bring us even more improvements. Before we’ve even had a chance to enjoy the most recent ones! 

It’s only fairly recently that the Wi-Fi Alliance announced the certification for Wi-Fi 6E (or Wi-Fi 6 Extended). This joyful addition to the spectrum for unlicensed Wi-Fi was the first in 20 years! Yet even with this extra ability to give the 6 GHz band an advantage, the next generation of wireless technology is still on the way. And with the promise of even higher data rates and lower latency that the current offering!

Wi-Fi 7 (or 802.11be to be technically correct), in comparison to Wi-Fi 6, will:

  • Use multi-band/ multi-channel aggregation and operation 
  • Deliver higher spectrum and power efficiency
  • Have better interference mitigations
  • Offer higher capacity density 
  • Have higher cost efficiency. 

As a result of the projected ability for it to support up to 30Gbps throughout, this seventh generation of Wi-Fi is also being referred to as Wi-Fi Extremely High Throughput. It will be approximately 3 times faster than Wi-Fi 6.  

What are the enhancements of Wi-Fi 7 over Wi-Fi 6? 

Wi-Fi 7 is purported to offer a number of better features. Some of the direct improvements over it’s Wi-Fi 6 precedent are:

  • The support of 320 MHz transmissions. In comparison to 802.11ax, this is double the 160 MHz it currently supports
  • The use of higher modulation orders, optionally supporting 4096-QAM. This is a significant increase from 802.11ax ‘s 1024-QAM 
  • The allocation of multiple resource units, such as groups of OFMDA tones

Due to the last feature, Wi-Fi 7 will be the perfect option for enterprise spaces due to having more efficient spectrum utilisation across multiple resource units. 

Organisations requiring the addition of AR/VR, Iot and IIoT as part of their workflow will find Wi-Fi 7 a useful tool in their digital transformations. 

Applications that require deterministic latency (an upper limit to how long a signal takes to get from point A to point B), high reliability and quality of service will find that Wi-Fi 7 has the potential to support them. 

And it’s not just the workplace that Wi-Fi 7 will prove beneficial. Due to Wi-Fi 7 being optimised for video, those who enjoy gaming and streaming at home will also enjoy the improvements. Any smart-home devices and services will likely feel enhanced with the new Wi-Fi standard. 

The popularity of video is huge, and will only continue to grow. It is expected to become the dominant form of internet traffic (if it isn’t already). Cisco’s Visual Networking Index expected video traffic on a global IP scale would be 82% of all IP traffic by this year for both business and consumer. 

When can we expect to get Wi-Fi 7?

The 802.11be amendment is expected to be published by IEEE in 2024. Commercial deployment of Wi-Fi 7 will likely be around the same time. 

Following that, the Wi-Fi Alliance will then release the Wi-Fi 7 certification programme, just like with Wi-Fi 6 and 6E, which will ensure security standards and interoperability. 

But in the interim, we’ll be enjoying what Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E has to offer! You can read more about this Wi-Fi standard in our previous blog post, if you’re wondering what all the fuss is about.