NEEDHAM, Mass. – Fueled by the continued adoption of the latest Wi-Fi standards and an easing of supply chain constraints, the enterprise segment of the worldwide wireless local area network (WLAN) market increased revenues 34.3% year over year in the third quarter of 2022 (3Q22) to $2.6 billion, according to results published in the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Wireless LAN Tracker. The 34.3% annualized growth in 3Q22 builds on the market's 20.4% year-over-year growth in the second quarter of 2022. Through the first three quarters of 2022, the enterprise WLAN market is up 24.5% compared to 2021.

A new Wi-Fi standard was added to the WLAN Tracker in 3Q22: Wi-Fi 6E, an iterative advancement of the Wi-Fi 6 standard. Wi-Fi 6E expands Wi-Fi's use to the 6 GHz band of spectrum, whereas previous Wi-Fi standards used the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands. In 3Q22, Wi-Fi 6E made up 4.8% of the market revenues for dependent access points (AP), marking the beginning of enterprise adoption of the standard. Wi-Fi 6 made up the vast balance (79.7%) of dependent AP revenues.

The consumer segment of the WLAN market increased 2.4% year over year in 3Q22, with the quarter's unit shipments declining 13.2% compared to the third quarter of 2021. Adoption of Wi-Fi 6 continues in the consumer segment of the WLAN market as well. In 3Q22, Wi-Fi 6 made up 38.1% of the market's revenues.

"A variety of factors continue to drive growth in the enterprise WLAN market. Perhaps most importantly, the global shortage of various infrastructure components and log-jammed supply chains are showing signs of easing, allowing networking vendors to convert record-large backlogs into revenue and giving enterprise customers access to the latest Wi-Fi technology," said Brandon Butler, research manager, Enterprise Netwo r k s, IDC. "Meanwhile, new Wi-Fi standards are encouraging enterprise adoption of WLAN technology, notably the emergence of Wi-Fi in the 6 GHz spectrum via Wi-Fi 6E."

The enterprise WLAN market had generally strong results across the globe. In the United States, the market increased 38.6% annually, while in Canada the market rose 27.9% year over year; in Latin America the market grew 3.5% from a year earlier. In Western Europe, the market increased 59.1%, but in Central and Eastern Europe, the market declined 12.0%. In the Middle East & Africa, the market rose 39.9%. In the Asia/Pacific region, excluding Japan and China, the market rose 40.5%, while in the China (PRC) the market increased 16.9% year over year and in Japan the market rose 15.9%.

3Q22 Company Highlights

Cisco's enterprise WLAN revenues increased 29.8% in 3Q22 to $1.0 billion and increased 32.4% on a sequential basis from 2Q22 to 3Q22. The company’s market share stood at 39.7% in 3Q22, compared to a market share of 37.7% in 2Q22.

HPE-Aruba revenues rose 76.6% year over year in 3Q22 and rose 29.0% sequentially, giving the company market share of 15.3%, up from 14.9% in the previous quarter.

Ubiquiti enterprise WLAN revenues increased 19.2% year over year in 3Q22 and rose 14.0% sequentially, giving the company 7.2% market share in the quarter, down from 7.9% in 2Q22.

Huawei enterprise WLAN revenues rose 6.7% year over year in 3Q22 and declined 9.3% from 2Q22 to 3Q22, giving the company 6.1% market share, down from 8.5% in 2Q22.

H3C revenues increased 0.7% in 3Q22, and increased 17.7% sequentially, giving the company market share of 4.3%, down slightly from the 4.6% share in 2Q22.

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The IDC Worldwide Quarterly Wireless LAN Tracker provides total market size and vendor share data in an easy-to-use Excel pivot table format. The geographic coverage includes nine major regions (USA, Canada, Latin America, People's Republic of China, Asia/Pacific excluding Japan & China, Japan, Western Europe, Central and Eastern Europe, and Middle East and Africa) and 60 countries. The WLAN market is further segmented by product class, product type, product, standard, and location. Measurement for the WLAN market is provided in vendor revenue, value, and unit shipments.