LONDON-Worldwide wireless local area network hardware for the first quarter of this year trumped the fourth quarter of 2003 by 2 percent with a revenue of $696.4 million, according to Infonetics Research. The industry will witness another 2-percent growth, amounting to $713.6 million, by the first quarter of 2005, according to the report.
Linksys tops the market share hierarchy, followed by D-Link, Netgear and Cisco in that order, said Infonetics.
WLAN hardware covers access points, switches, aggregation devices and security gateways. The report identified switch ports as standing out with a revenue rise of 121 percent.
“This is a strong quarter for wireless LAN switch vendors, with the segment showing healthy port and revenue growth: start-ups in particular are gaining traction and have been pulling in some notable wins, not just in the U.S., but in Europe and Asia too,” said Richard Webb, directing analyst at Infonetics.
