WLAN Market Shake Up

Cisco, Netgear, TP-Link, and Aruba increased their chances for long term survival in the wireless LAN market, according to figures released by market research firm In-Stat. On the other hand, Linksys and Technicolor would like to forget 2010.In-Stat found that Cisco was once again the industry's market leader: increasing its revenue from $902 million in 2009 to $1.187 billion in 2011. Netgear moved up from the market's number three position to the second spot as its sales grew from $470 million to $638 million year over year. TP-Link's revenue rose from $178 million in 2009 to $291 million the following year, an impressive 64% jump. In 2009, Aruba was perched in the number 10 spot with $159 million in revenue but leaped to the eighth position on the strength of $236 million in sales.

Technicolor dropped from the second spot to third place as its revenue declined from $470 million to $454 million year over year. Linksys, which is a Cisco brand, saw its sales fall from $417 million in 2010 to $392 million in 2009. In addition, Belkin, which was ranked eighth in 2009, dropped out the Top Ten in 2010 as ZyXEL made its way onto the list.

Mobility has become a key IT initiative in small and medium businesses. Demonstrating the continued interest in wireless LANs, revenue among the Top Ten vendors increased from $3.75 billion to $4.40 billion, about 18%. Despite the fact that wireless LANs have been shipping for more than a decade, vendors continue to bring innovative solutions to market, and small and medium business contiue to buy them.