ABI: 802.11ac will be in 45% of consumer Wi-Fi access points shipped by 2015

The 802.11ac Wi-Fi standard is enjoying rapid adoption, achieving 8 percent of the total consumer access point market in 2013 and 6 percent of the market for enterprise-sized access points, said ABI Research.

In December, Dell'Oro Group also estimated that 802.11ac had accounted for 6 percent of enterprise access point market units.

According to ABI, Cisco is the largest 802.11ac enterprise vendor, accounting for nearly 20 percent of total access points shipped in 2013.

Most 802.11ac customer premises equipment includes dual-band access to support existing 802.11n devices.

"Although 802.11n devices hold the largest market share of the consumer Wi-Fi device shipments in 2013, [the] 802.11n share of shipments is likely to start declining in 2014 as 802.11ac device adoption continues to grow. 802.11ac devices are expected to represent 45 percent of consumer Wi-Fi equipment shipments at the end of 2014," said Khin Sandi Lynn, ABI industry analyst.

ABI said the worldwide Wi-Fi customer premises equipment market, including access points, routers and gateways shipments, exceeded 139.1 million during 2013. In the enterprise Wi-Fi market, 13.2 million access points were shipped during 2013, representing a 20 percent increment from 2012.

The firm expects consumer and enterprise WLAN access point shipments will reach 171.5 million and 25 million, respectively, at the end of 2019.

For more:
- see this ABI release

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