The worldwide Wi-Fi customer premises equipment market including access points, routers and gateways shipments surpassed 139.1 million in 2013. “802.11ac access point adoption is starting to gain market share, representing 8% of the total consumer access point market in 2013,” says Jake Saunders, VP and practice director at ABI Research.

More device manufacturers started to ship 802.11ac products in 2013; the majority of them provide 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, 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% of consumer Wi-Fi equipment shipments at the end of 2014,” adds Khin Sandi Lynn, industry analyst.

In the enterprise Wi-Fi market, 13.2 million access points were shipped in 2013; a 20% increment from 2012. 802.11ac standard access points accounted for 6% of enterprise-sized access points shipped in 2013. Cisco is the largest 802.11ac enterprise vendor, accounting for nearly 20% of total access points shipped in 2013.

D-Link topped the consumer Wi-Fi shipment market with a 12.7% market share in 3Q-2013, while TP-LINK dropped to second position with a slightly lower market share of 12.6%, and NETGEAR finished third at 12.4%. ZTE maintains its pole in the enterprise WLAN market with 33% market share, while Cisco stands in second position with 27%, followed by HP Networking with 8%.  ABI Research forecasts that consumer and enterprise WLAN access point shipments will reach 171.5 million and 25 million respectively at the end of 2019.

ABI Research’s study on “Wi-Fi Equipment” covers worldwide Consumer and Enterprise WLAN equipment market. The report tracks equipment by product type, wireless protocol, and geography.  The report contains market shares of leading WLAN equipment manufacturers worldwide based on quarterly shipment data and forecasts.

 These findings are part of ABI Research’s Broadband CPE and Wi-Fi Research Services.