Wireless LAN Sales to Jump 20% in 2004

[Alexander Turcic]

According to a newly published report, Dell'Oro Group predicts that sales of wireless LAN products will grow 20 percent in 2004 to $2.1 billion. According to the Dell'Oro Group report, enterprise-class access point shipments are forecast to increase dramatically by 75 percent in 2004, growing at an average annual rate of 47 percent through 2008. In contrast, small office / home office (SOHO) products such as access points, gateways, and network interface cards, are forecast to peak in the near term as users opt for DSL and cable modems with embedded wireless LAN and notebook computers with integrated wireless LAN.

"Until recently, corporations have been reluctant to adopt wireless LANs, primarily because of security concerns," commented Greg Collins, Senior Director of wireless LAN research at Dell'Oro Group. "Now with the improvements in management, encryption, and user authentication, wireless LAN will penetrate larger corporations because the technology improves productivity by allowing users to connect to the network from anywhere."

The result of this study is in line with predictions made by other research houses. For instance, as we reported earlier, Yankee Group predicts that about 27% of the world's population will use wireless services by 2007!