Global WLAN market grows 5.8% in Q3 2024, reaches $2.5B

The enterprise worldwide wireless local area network (WLAN) market grew 5.8% between the second and third quarters of 2024 to reach $2.5 billion, according to results published in the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly WLAN Tracker.

The sequential growth in the third quarter follows a 12.4% increase between the first and second quarters of 2024. This continued growth indicates that the market’s supply and demand dynamics are stabilizing after two years of volatility driven largely by the drawdown of backlogged products stemming from the COVID-19-era global supply chain crisis. The enterprise WLAN market declined 1.7% on a year-over-year (YoY) basis and is down 17.5% through the first three quarters of the year compared to the elevated revenues of 2023.

The latest Wi-Fi standards are steadily gaining traction in the enterprise WLAN market. Wi-Fi 6E, which enables Wi-Fi to utilize the 6 GHz band of unlicensed spectrum, accounted for 31.7% of the dependent access point market’s revenues in the third quarter (3Q24). That’s compared to making up 20.4% of the segment’s revenues a year earlier. Wi-Fi 7 is also starting to be adopted, making up 4.9% of the dependent AP segment’s revenues, while most remaining dependent APs continue to utilize Wi-Fi 6 technology.

“The WLAN industry continues to be a dynamic market, driven by a variety of trends. Firstly, the market continues its steady march back to normalization of supply and demand dynamics by showing growth progress on a quarter-over-quarter basis,” says Brandon Butler, Senior Research Manager, Enterprise Networks, IDC. “Meanwhile, the new standards continue to make up a larger share of WLAN investments, notably Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7, both of which extend Wi-Fi to use to the 6 GHz band.”

In the United States the enterprise WLAN market declined 3.2% YoY but increased 10.7% sequentially from 2Q24 to 3Q24. In Western Europe, the market showed modest growth, increasing 0.2% YoY and 4.2% sequentially. In Central and Eastern Europe, the market rose 0.5% YoY and 7.8% sequentially. In the Asia Pacific region, excluding Japan and China, the market declined 4.4% YoY and fell 3.5% sequentially. In the People’s Republic of China, the market declined 10.2% YoY but rose 2.2% sequentially.

Cisco’s enterprise WLAN revenues declined 5.7% YoY but rose 11.0% sequentially to reach $1.0 billion, capturing 41.6% of the market at the end of the third quarter.

HPE Aruba Networking revenues grew 23.9% YoY in 3Q24 and rose 8.2%, sequentially, resulting in a 15.1% market share in the quarter.

Ubiquiti enterprise WLAN revenues increased 27.5% YoY and 9.0% sequentially, giving the company 8.3% market share.

Huawei enterprise WLAN revenues declined 1.8% YoY in 3Q24 and fell 20.5% sequentially, giving the company market share of 7.2%.

Juniper Networks enterprise WLAN revenues increased 17.6% YoY and rose 11.6% sequentially, giving the company 5.3% market share.

IDC