Cisco Systems has led the worldwide enterprise wireless local area network (WLAN) market with 43.7% market share in the third quarter of this year.
The company’s market share remained unchanged from Q2, but declined from 47.1% reported in the third quarter of 2015.
One of the primary growth drivers for Cisco was reported to be the Meraki cloud-managed WLAN portfolio, offsetting declines in the company’s traditional controller-based WLAN portfolio.
Research firm IDC revealed that the combined consumer and enterprise WLAN market segments increased 1.8% year over year in Q3, and increased 6.7% on a sequential basis to reach $2.47bn.
According to the IDC Worldwide Quarterly WLAN Tracker, the enterprise segment increased 8.4% year over year in Q3 to finish at $1.45bn, the second consecutive quarter of strong growth.
IDC attributed the sustained growth to refresh cycles and the funding of digital transformation initiatives in several enterprises.
The research firm claimed that the 802.11ac standard now accounts for 67.1% of dependent access point unit shipments and 80.9% of dependent access point revenues, which sets the stage for near obsolescence of the 802.11n standard by 2018 in the mainstream enterprise segment.
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Aruba-HPE’s enterprise WLAN market share declined to14.3% in Q3, from 14.6% in Q2.
Brocade-Ruckus’ market share rose 22% year over year in Q3 and accounted for 6.7% of the entire market in the quarter.
Huawei posted strong growth in 3Q16, increasing 208% over 3Q15, and claiming 4.3% market share.
Ubiquiti posted 87% year over year growth and accounted for 4.3% of the overall market in Q3.
Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) (APeJ) recorded better growth in the enterprise WLAN market, increasing 28.8% year over year largely on the heels of a 55.7% rise in China over the same period.
Japan returned to growth for the first time since 2014, increasing 7.4%. Western Europe increased 6.7% in Q3, with better outcomes in Germany and Spain. The growth in Central and Eastern Europe increased 6.3%.
North America saw a more tepid 2.7% growth rate in the quarter, affected by an 8.4% drop in Canada. Latin America was the only region to record an overall decline, contracting 2.9% in Q3.
IDC research manager for worldwide networking trackers Petr Jirovsky said: “With enterprises and service providers investing in digital transformation-related mobile infrastructure upgrades and network refreshes, APeJ recorded very strong 3Q16 growth, with most of the other regions making similar investments albeit on a smaller scale.
“This really speaks to the now near universally accepted use of WLAN and mobility for mission-critical enterprise applications.”
Meanwhile, consumer WLAN market revenue dropped 6.3% on a year-over-year basis in Q3, finishing at $1.02bn.
The 802.11ac standard implementation in the consumer market has been significantly slower, when compared to the enterprise segment, coupled with rapid price erosion on consumer-grade devices.
The 802.11ac standard accounted for only 25.2% of shipments and 52.7% of revenue in the consumer category in Q3.
