TEMPE, Ariz.-In an in-depth wireless local area network, WiMAX and chip market study, research firm Forward Concepts predicted that WLAN equipment sales will grow to $5.9 billion in 2006 as new IEEE 802.11n and Voice over Wi-Fi equipment is introduced and the infrastructure for traditional Wi-Fi expands.
In the report, the WiMAX and pre-WiMAX equipment market, including 802.16d and 802.16e, is forecasted to grow from $72 million in 2005 to just more than $2 billion in 2009, for an annual compound growth rate of 130 percent.
“The growing WLAN market is a classic example of how a market can continue to expand as costs and prices ride down the learning curve, opening up new applications and market opportunities,” said Carter Horney, author of the report. “Specifically, in spite of a predicted 23-percent average selling price drop, worldwide shipments of WLAN equipment products will increase 6 percent to the $5.2 billion level in 2005.”
“We view WiMAX as complementary to both Wi-Fi and 3G cellular,” Horney said. “Fixed 802.16d systems can provide backbones for Wi-Fi hot spots where DSL or cable is unavailable or impractical. When emerging 802.16e provides a mobility WiMAX capability, it will augment the Wi-Fi infrastructure that will remain dominant for several years.”
The report said early views were that mobile WiMAX would be a threat to third-generation wireless services, but now cellular equipment vendors such as Nokia Corp. are saying that WiMAX will be complementary. Preliminary analyses indicate that 802.16e data delivery costs can be significantly cheaper per megabyte than HSDPA or 1x EV-DO when provided as an overlay to a cellular network.
In addition, the report said that pure WiMAX chipsets, beginning with 802.16d-compliant fixed-operation units, are beginning to ship for estimated 2005 revenues of $5.4 million. However, mobility-capable 802.16e chipsets will begin sampling next year, and the combined chip market is forecast to grow at a 209-percent compound annual growth rate to $489 million in 2009.
The report not only provides details of chip vendor market shares for each chip class, but also indicates which chip vendor’s products are shipping to which equipment vendors and which equipment is re-branded and sold under another vendor’s name.
The report, titled “Beyond Wi-Fi: 802.11n, VoWi-Fi & WiMAX” is based on product reviews and interviews with numerous companies involved in the WLAN and WiMAX markets and provides forecasts through 2009 of all market segments.
