WLAN Growth

The Q4 enterprise WLAN market grew 3.2% to reach $2.6 billion, says IDC, but for the full year the market declined 12.7% y-o-y finishing at $9.4 billion.

The Q3 market grew 5.8% on Q2 and the Q4 market grew 4.8% on Q3.

The latest Wi-Fi standards are driving growth. Wi-Fi 6E, which enables Wi-Fi to utilize the 6 GHz band of unlicensed spectrum, accounted for 29.0% of dependent access point market segment revenues in 4Q24. That’s compared to making up 22.5% of the segment’s revenues a year earlier.

Wi-Fi 7 adoption increased in the fourth quarter too, making up 10.2% of the dependent AP segment’s revenues in 4Q24, growing from 4.9% of dependent AP revenues in 3Q24.

In the Americas, the market increased 6.1% YoY in 4Q24, but declined 16.7% for the full year.

In the United States, a strong fourth quarter (7.1% YoY growth) did not offset declines from earlier in the year, leading to a full year decline of 17.3% YoY.

In EMEA, a similar pattern played out: The enterprise WLAN market grew 8.2% YoY in the fourth quarter and declined 9.3% for the full year.

In the AsiaPac Q4  revenues declined 6.9% on an annual basis, while full year revenues dropped 8.8% YoY.

In China, the market declined 20.1% YoY in 4Q24 and declined 14.2% for the full year.

• Cisco’s enterprise WLAN revenues rose 2.8% YoY in 4Q24 but declined 19.1% for the full year to finish at $3.7B. Cisco’s market share stood at 39.5% to end 2024.

• HPE Aruba Networking revenues grew 17.9% YoY in 4Q24 but declined 8.3% for the full year, finishing at $1.4B in 2024 revenues and giving the company 15.2% market share to end the year.

• Huawei enterprise WLAN revenues declined 6.2% YoY in 4Q24 and fell 1.6% for the full year. Huawei’s 2024 revenues of $851M gave the company 9.0% market share to end the year.

• Ubiquiti enterprise WLAN revenues increased 39.3% YoY in 4Q24 and rose 20.5% for the full year, giving the company $800M in full year revenue and 8.5% market share.

• Juniper Networks enterprise WLAN revenues increased 13.6% YoY in 4Q24 and rose 9.6% for the full year 2024, giving the company market share of 5.1% on $484M in annual revenue.