WLAN market growth fueled by 14% rise in shipments

1Q 2026 WLAN revenues were driven by a 14 percent growth in unit shipments, and an average selling price that is starting to creep up, according to Dell’Oro.

“Several vendors have increased WLAN list prices to compensate for increasing costs of memory components caused by the AI infrastructure boom,” said Siân Morgan, Research Director at Dell’Oro Group. “The full impact of price increases has not materialized in vendor revenues, but despite this, the WLAN market has grown at double digit rates for five consecutive quarters.

“Wi-Fi 7 revenue grew by triple digits,” continued Morgan, “Cisco, Ubiquiti and Huawei are leading the Wi-Fi 7 market. However, adoption was still only 37 percent of Indoor APs shipped in 1Q 2026. This presents an opportunity for all vendors to refresh older technology with the latest gear.”

Additional highlights from the 1Q 2026 Wireless LAN Quarterly Report:

• With the shortage of memory components still not resolved, we expect prices to continue rising, and equipment lead times to be variable in a supply-driven market.
• Shipments of access points with multi-gig and 10 Gbps interfaces are growing rapidly, putting additional demands on campus switches.
• Several new AIOps feature announcements are highlighting vendor differentiation in the WLAN market.

Dell’Oro