After two years of volatility driven largely by the drawdown of backlogged product orders stemming from the Covid-era global supply chain crisis, the enterprise worldwide wireless local area network (WLAN) market grew 10.6% in the first quarter of 2025 to reach $2.3bn in value, according to research from IDC.
The Worldwide quarterly wireless LAN tracker calculated the total market revenue, value and unit shipments of the WLAN arena in a geographic coverage taking in 60 countries in nine major regions, including the US, Canada, Latin America, Japan, China, the rest of the Asia-Pacific region, Western Europe, Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. The analysis was further segmented by product class, product type, product standard and location.
The study observed that the market’s supply and demand dynamics are stabilising as annualised growth in the first quarter of 2025 built on the momentum in 2024, when market revenues increased in each sequential quarter of the year. This included rising 4.8% between the third and fourth quarters of 2024 and growing 5.8% between the second and third quarters of 2024.
Looking at other growth engines, IDC also pointed to acceptance of the latest Wi-Fi standards driving growth in the enterprise WLAN market. Wi-Fi 6E, which enables Wi-Fi to utilise the 6GHz band of unlicensed spectrum, accounted for 31.9% of dependent access point market segment revenues in Q1 2025, compared with making up 27.7% of the segment’s revenues a year earlier.
The survey also found that Wi-Fi 7 adoption increased in the first quarter, too, making up 11.8% of the dependent AP segment’s revenues in Q1 2025, growing from 10.2% of dependent AP revenues in the fourth quarter of the previous year.
From a geographical perspective, in the Americas, the enterprise WLAN market increased 15.2% year-on-year in Q1 2025, driven by strong growth of 21% in the US. In the Europe, Middle East and Africa region, the market grew 11% on an annual basis, while in the Asia-Pacific region, revenues grew 1%, as market revenues in China declined 4.2% year-on-year.
Looking at the performance of the leading individual enterprise WLAN suppliers, the study revealed that during the quarter, Cisco’s enterprise WLAN revenues rose 4.6% year-on-year in Q1 2025 to reach $904.5m, giving the company market share of 39.5%, more than double that of next-best-ranked rival HPE Aruba Networking (15.9%), for whom revenues grew 10.7% year-on-year in Q1 2025 to reach $363.9m.
Rounding out the top five were Ubiquiti, which generated enterprise WLAN revenues of $267.4m, increasing 50.9% on an annual basis in Q1 2025, leading to a market share of 11.7%; followed by Huawei, whose enterprise WLAN revenues actually fell 10.7% compared with Q1 2024 to total $124.1m, giving the company market share of 5.4%. Finally, Juniper Networks saw enterprise WLAN revenues increase 21.9% year-on-year in Q1 2025 to total $120.9m, leading to a market share of 5.3%.
“The enterprise WLAN market continues to reset after a volatile period of annualised growth rates, driven by complex supply chain disruptions and inventory management issues impacting both vendors and end users,” said Brandon Butler, senior research manager of enterprise networks at IDC.
“The fundamentals of the enterprise WLAN market remain strong, however, with exciting innovations such as 6GHz Wi-Fi and AI-powered management capabilities continuing to power the next generation of wireless connectivity.”
