IDC: Cisco, Aruba, HP, Ruckus all Experience WLAN Growth in Q1 2013

The combined consumer and enterprise worldwide WLAN market segments experienced year-over-year growth of 12.5% in the first quarter of 2013 (1Q13). According to the results published in the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly WLAN Tracker, the enterprise segment continued to grow at a healthy rate of 19.3% over the same period last year. The first quarter of 2013 was the thirteenth consecutive quarter with annual growth greater than 15%. The consumer WLAN market also started the year 2013 on a relative high note, growing 6.2% year over year.

"The explosion of mobile devices and the uptake of enterprise mobility applications continue to be top of mind for enterprise IT in terms of driving WLAN infrastructure growth across a wide range of enterprise verticals and use cases," said Rohit Mehra, Vice President, Network Infrastructure, at IDC. "While this quarter saw some slowing of growth in Wi-Fi infrastructure rollouts for mobile offload applications, the longer term trend of cellular operators and managed service providers leveraging Wi-Fi stays intact and will continue to boost additional growth in

Key WLAN vendor highlights:

·    Cisco's 1Q13 worldwide enterprise WLAN revenue grew a strong 23.4% year over year, reaching $510 million in the quarter. The North American market accounted for 48.8% of Cisco's worldwide enterprise WLAN revenue in 1Q13. Cisco's worldwide market share stands at 52.9% in 1Q13, its highest share since 4Q10.

·    Aruba (excluding its OEM business) grew its enterprise revenue 8.5% year over year in 1Q13, which was below the overall market. As a result, Aruba now holds 10.5% of the enterprise WLAN market, down from 11.5% in 1Q12.

·    HP's overall enterprise WLAN revenue increased 12.4% year over year in 1Q13, a notable improvement in annual growth compared to HP's results for the last few quarters. As a result, HP's market share increased slightly to 5.4% in 1Q13, up from 5.1% in 1Q12.

·    Ruckus grew a solid 24.0% year over year in 1Q13, well above the overall market, although this does reflect noticeable deceleration of year-over-year growth for Ruckus compared to previous quarters.

An interactive graphic showing worldwide enterprise WLAN revenues for the top 5 vendors over the previous five quarters is available here.