EMEA WLAN market up 6.1% in Q1 2005

IDC says that the EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) WLAN market increased by 6.1% to $444.9 mln customer revenue during Q1 2005, compared to $419.3 mln customer revenue in Q4 2004. EMEA WLAN infrastructure experienced revenue growth of 14.7%, while WLAN client revenue declined by 10.6%. The main reason for declining revenue in the WLAN client segment is the growing number of preinstalled connections on notebooks and desktops. During Q1 2005, only 1.4 mln add-on clients were shipped, a decline of 13% compared to Q4 2004, while more than 4.7 mln WLAN connections were preinstalled on notebooks or desktops. Wireless gateways/routers continued to take the largest share of the WLAN infrastructure segment and increased by 19.6%, while revenue for in-building access points only increased by 6.7%. Throughout the quarter, shipments of wireless routers/gateways to EMEA increased by 24% compared to the previous quarter. At the same time, shipments of in-building access points decreased by 2%.