MARKET TREND

To start to understand the market trend it is important to understand the customers
of WLANs. Next it is necessary to understand why the customers need WLANs
and how WLAN fulfills the need of customers. For any product to be successful it
is important that there is “yes” as an answer to one of these three questions: Is
there a gap in the market? Are the customers in pain? Can they gain/profit from
WLANs? This section tries to answer these questions briefly; details will be
discussed in Chapter 2. Some of these questions also bring us to the requirements
and issues of WLANs; these two topics are discussed in Sections 1.5 and 1.6,
respectively.
The total WLAN market is split into four specific segments and these are
divided into the consumer and business markets, as shown in Figure 1.4 [37]. This
figure does not represent the penetration and growth of WLAN in the market; it
only represents the usage and the fact that the growth should be expected to be high in the enterprise (company) market but that issues related to WLAN have
delayed growth in the enterprise market. The biggest growth sector of WLAN is
the home or residential market. Once the issues related to WLANs are solved, there
will be a change in the market; see Sections 1.5 and 1.6.
The growth of WLAN has been due to the benefits discussed in Section 1.2.
From the market perspective there are three main reasons for growth: People need
connectivity (desktops with an Ethernet connection provides that); people need
mobility (which brings us to the arena of wireless); and people need performance.
WLANs can provide high throughput and thus higher performance (of course
giving the required QoS is an issue but work is ongoing to solve this issue – see
Section 1.6 and Chapter 3). These three factors, mobility, connectivity, and
performance, give us the picture of where WLAN is today (see Figure 1.5). Today WLAN growth is mainly in the residential market and in the public
arena, commonly known as hotspots. Incumbent Internet service providers (ISPs)
have deployed WLANs, new operators like the WISPs have appeared, and Mobile
Network Operators (MNOs) and fixed operators are also deploying WLANs. More
and more cities are providing WLAN coverage, and several restaurants, airports,
and shops/shopping zones are providing WLAN-based Internet access. This itself
shows the trend towards availability in the market.
The future growth of WLAN is dependent on availability, so tomorrow’s
WLANs should not only provide the three benefits mentioned above but should
also be available to users possibly anywhere and anytime. Users should in time
also get the luxury of continuous connectivity all the time even if the network is
owned by different stakeholders. This brings us to the keyword “seamlessness” in
service at all times under any condition.

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