Global Wi-Fi CPE Shipments Top 43.3m Q1

Worldwide consumer Wi-Fi customer premises equipment (CPE) shipments surpassed 43.3 million at the end of this year's first quarter, which represents a 16.8 percent increase from the fourth quarter of 2012, according to a report from ABI Research. T

he report further shows that 802.11n device shipments still dominate the market, accounting for more than two thirds of total device shipments.

However, 802.11ac access point adoption is starting to gain traction, the study found.

The 802.11ac protocol enables speeds up to 1.3 Gbps as well as better coverage than 802.11n. Over 1 million of 802.11ac consumer access points are expected to be shipped by the end of 2013.

A total of 0.2 million consumer 802.11ac Wi-Fi APs shipped in this year's first quarter.

The report also indicates that, in the Soho/consumer Wi-Fi equipment market, TP-Link maintains the dominant market share with 15 percent, followed by Netgear and D-Link with 12 percent and 11 percent, respectively.

In the enterprise WLAN sector, ZTE has the largest market share, accounting for 39 percent of total access point shipments while Cisco holds the second largest market share of 26 percent, and HP networking ranks third as it overtook the market share of Aruba Networks as of late 2012.