According to IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Wireless LAN Tracker, the Indian WLAN market had a marginal YoY growth of 4.5% by vendor revenue during 4Q21 majorly driven by the enterprise wireless segment. The market stood at USD 64.5 million (by Vendor Revenue).
The WLAN segment witnessed a marginal growth of 4.5% YoY by vendor revenue. While the enterprise WLAN grew strongly with pent-up demand from organizations coming through, the consumer wireless demand softened with offices reopening and the festival season in India coming to an end thereby posing only marginal growth for the overall WLAN segment. The enterprise WLAN segment exhibited a very strong 45.4% YoY growth and consumer WLAN declined by 22.0% YoY.
Traction for Wi-Fi 6 in Indian enterprises expanded, with Wi-Fi 6 contributing to 75.7% of access points revenues during 4Q21. The demand for Wi-Fi 6 adoption is fueled by the exceedingly increasing lead times for previous generations of wireless access points caused by semiconductor shortages.
Business in the enterprise wireless segment was exceptional with a YoY growth of 45.4% by vendor revenue. The growth was majorly driven by enterprises investing in wireless infrastructure ahead of office opening post the third wave of COVID-19. Vendors were also focused on clearing the existing backlogs caused by chip shortages to be able to efficiently cater to future demand. Services organizations were seen investing heavily on spinning up newer locations primarily focusing on wireless connectivity. Cloud-managed wireless was witnessed gathering stream owing to simpler deployment and management. Investments from the education vertical bounced back after a long slump caused due to COVID-19. Wi-Fi 6 contributed to 75.7% of the access point revenues due to lesser wait times compared to the previous generations of wireless access points.
The consumer gateway router business declined sharply by 22.0% YoY by vendor revenue. The decline in the gateway router segment was due to offices opening in multiple parts of the country and the festival season coming to an end in India. With ISP as the channel, Wi-Fi 6 is starting to get traction in the consumer segment as well. However, the gateway router market is still dominated by Wi-Fi 5 shipments.
With a market share of 24.1%, TP-Link was the market leader in the WLAN segment during 4Q21. Within the enterprise-class WLAN segment, Cisco was the market leader with a 19.7% market share followed by HPE with 18.1%.
