Wi-Fi Market Trends Worldwide 2022

Wi-Fi (Wireless Fidelity) is a wireless local area networking (WLAN) technology that sends and receives radio waves between devices in the license-free 2.4GHz, 5GHz, and 6GHz bands. Since its introduction, Wi-Fi has gained traction in various products due to its efficient, reliable and secure connectivity.

This report focuses on Wi-Fi chips and solutions, discusses global Wi-Fi market trends and anticipates changes through 2026.

| Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E Drive Global Market Opportunities

The diversified applications such as IoT (Internet of Things) systems, high-definition video conferencing, and virtual reality (AR/VR) accelerate the development of Wi-Fi demands. The increasing enrichment of wireless networking scenarios results in a swift growth in the number of connected devices. In 2022, more than 4.36 billion devices were shipped. In 2026, the number of devices shipments will increase to 5.28 billion, CAGR of 4.87%.

Market momentum underscores the need for the entire 6 GHz band and more concurrently connected devices, taking into consideration of factors such as consumers’ and business’ need for effective communications, technology developments and access to additional spectrum. Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E satisfy the growing demand for higher-bandwidth services and multiple concurrencies. Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E is a significant upgrade over the previous wireless protocol, efficiently handling large network traffic volumes and can lead to 75% less latency than previous versions.

Wi-Fi 6 adds transformational multi-user capabilities like OFDMA and uplink MU-MIMO to manage densely populated environments. It has a maximum speed of 9.6Gbps, which is higher than Wi-Fi 5 and Wi-Fi 4. Wi-Fi 6E adds 6GHz operation to Wi-Fi 6 capabilities, offering more 80 and 160MHz channels, for a new swath of spectrum unencumbered by interference from older Wi-Fi 5 or 4 devices.

In 2022, the global Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E device shipments reached 2.32 billion units with a growth rate of 87.51%, and 3.79 billion units in 2026, CAGR of 13.01%.