Wireless deployments have recorded a third consecutive quarter of growth in Australia with the consumer smartphone market one of the main drivers.
An IDC report has found social networking, rich media, voice and video communication contributed to an unprecedented need for wireless connectivity in A/NZ.
While enterprises remained the largest users of wireless infrastructure, the consumer space gained share from enterprise over the year.
This means that more consumer wireless routers were sold, thanks to an increased number of devices in households during the period.
IDC analyst, Tafadzwa Marasha, said by the end of 2013, the number of tablets and smartphones in A/NZ was expected to increase year-on-year by 37 per and 6.5 per cent respectively.
“With more than half of all current internet connections established over mobile devices, it is no wonder that wireless infrastructure has flourished this year. IDC expects to see this growth trend continue for the next 4 years,” he said.
However, service provider deployments differed between Australian and New Zealand.
New Zealand services providers embraced 3G/LTE offload via WLAN infrastructure while Australian providers preferred to rely on available spectrum to support mobile connectivity. Overall, provider contribution to the WLAN market remained minuscule in the region despite having the strongest growth (101 per cent year-on-year), according to IDC.
Enterprise and consumer growth were 38 and 46 per cent, respectively.
The main verticals which contributed to spending on wireless were government, retail, mining and large public spaces such as stadiums, conference halls and city councils.
Cisco continued to dominate the market, accounting for close to 30 per cent of all A/NZ hardware deployments.
Read more: Shrinking ICT budgets pose challenges for education sector: IDC
Marasha said other vendors with comparable offerings in the enterprise market included Aruba, Ruckus, HP, Xirrus, Meru, Motorola and Aerohive.
A combination of good products, industry standard certification courses and a legacy pole position in wired networks helped achieve this result. “Other vendors with comparable offerings in the enterprise market include Aruba, Ruckus, HP, Xirrus, Meru, Motorola and Aerohive, in no particular order,” Marasha said.
IDC expects to see more next generation Wi-Fi 802.11ac compatible access points and end-point devices once the standard has been ratified towards the end of 2013.
The noise around cloud based controllers increased in the second quarter and IDC sees Aerohive, Cisco Meraki, Aruba and Xirrus as the main vendors that have launched products using a Cloud managed approach so far.
The rest of the market is expected to follow suit in the near future with significant growth in the use of cloud based controllers as part of a broader ICT industry move towards cloud services, according to IDC.
