Wireless networking kit sales on the up

Sales of wireless LAN (WLAN) equipment are rising steadily as enterprises roll out campus-wide networks with business-class gear for both data and IP voice applications, new data from Infonetics Research shows.

Worldwide revenues for wireless networking equipment rose eight percent to $639m (£340) in the first quarter of 2006 and Infonetics expects annual sales to hit $3.8bn by 2009, with growth predicted in all geographic regions.

Cisco is still the leading vendor for WLAN gear, followed by Symbol, Aruba, 3Com and Trapeze, the analyst said.

Another wireless technology, WiMax, is also on the rise, according to Infonetics. In the first quarter of the year, revenue for WiMax equipment rose 48 percent to $68.3m and annual sales are expected to hit $1.7bn by 2009.

Infonetics attributes the rise to service providers adopting the technology and driving subscriber growth.

Thirty percent of WiMax equipment sales come from the EMEA region as a whole, with most deployments taking place in Eastern Europe, Africa and the Middle East. A further 26 percent of sales are from North America and Asia each, with the remaining 18 percent from Central and Latin America

By 2007, Infonetics forecasts, mobile WiMax products will hit the market and the technology will be on its way to becoming an "established" technology which will complement 3G, mesh and Wi-Fi.