$2.7 B of WLAN revenues marks eleven quarters of Y/Y growth, Dell’Oro

According to a recently published report from Dell’Oro Group, the trusted source for market information about the telecommunications, security, networks, and data center industries, enterprise-class Wireless LAN (WLAN) revenues grew 48 percent year-over-year (Y/Y) in the first quarter of 2023, fueled by high shipment volumes and increasing prices. Meanwhile, some vendors reported that backlogs came down faster than they had anticipated.

“The enterprise-class WLAN industry has not seen such a long stretch of Y/Y revenue growth in ten years,” said Siân Morgan, Wireless LAN Research Director at Dell’Oro Group. “But new orders are declining from the peaks of last year. Sky-high revenues are being fueled by the release of accumulated backlogs, and our analysis shows that this may be hiding a reduction in IT spending, with a digestion period right around the corner.

“Across the world, revenue growth varied by geography,” added Morgan. “North America has added nearly half a billion dollars to the WLAN market, while the slowest growth has been in China. Huawei has seen a considerable shift in the geographic distribution of its WLAN revenues,” continued Morgan.

Additional highlights from the 1Q 2023 Wireless LAN Quarterly Report:

• Average unit prices continued their Y/Y growth streak but are projected to start declining.
• Outdoor WLAN revenues grew as a percentage of the industry, supported by government initiatives.
• Public Cloud Managed solutions are taking market share from Premises and Private Cloud Managed solutions.
• Wi-Fi 6E Access Point shipments increased, but adoption is still lagging that of previous technologies such as Wi-Fi 6 or Wi-Fi 5.
• Meanwhile, Wi-Fi 7 APs have been announced by vendors in China and discussed in one North American vendors’ earnings call.

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