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Sales of wireless LANs to home users will soar this year, with products using IEEE 802.11 technology leading the way, according to a report by research company Cahners In-Stat/MDR, an In-Stat analyst says.

Worldwide, consumers will buy 7.3 million wireless LAN nodes--which include client and network hub devices--in 2002, up from about 4 million last year, says Gemma Paulo, an analyst at In-Stat.

The 802.11 technology will continue to gain ground against rival HomeRF, Paulo says. While 45 percent of nodes sold in 2000 used HomeRF, that percentage dropped to 30 percent in 2001, with 70 percent of all nodes being 802.11 products. Paulo did not forecast the market breakdown for 2002 but says 802.11 will continue to gain ground.

"It [802.11] will be over 90 percent in 2002," Paulo says.

Home users are beginning to embrace 11-mbps 802.11b wireless LANs as prices come down and products become available from a wide variety of vendors, including low-price makers whose products are stocked on retail shelves, Paulo says.

Access points, the hubs through which clients on a wireless LAN communicate, are generally selling for between $150 and $200, and client hardware is now available for less than $100. The growing adoption of 802.11 in enterprises is helping to expand the availability of products that use that technology, she says.

"Everybody who's anybody makes stuff for the 802.11 market. There are a lot of products, and prices are coming down fast," Paulo says.

HomeRF Moves Ahead

Last year, HomeRF achieved a boost from about 1.6 mbps to 10 mbps with the introduction of HomeRF 2.0. However, Compaq and Intel have declined to use the new, faster technology, dealing a blow to the adoption of HomeRF, Paulo says.

Consumers are using wireless LANs primarily to link multiple PCs, she says. Sharing a broadband Internet link is a popular use of the networks.

A few vendors last year began selling wireless LANs using the new 802.11a standard, which offers speeds as high as 54 mbps and is seen as a possible interconnect for home entertainment appliances. However, most home users will stick with the less-expensive 802.11b in the near future, Paulo says.

North America still accounts for the lion's share of home wireless LANs, but Asia-Pacific markets--particularly Japan, Taiwan, and Australia, as well as South Korea, a thriving broadband Internet market, also are seeing strong demand.

Wireless LANs next year will gain on ethernet as the most popular home network technology, In-Stat predicts in an earlier report. In 2001, consumers installed nearly twice as many ethernet nodes as wireless nodes in their homes, says In-Stat analyst Mike Wolfe. In 2002, they will hook up 10.9 million ethernet nodes and 7.3 million wireless out of a total of 14.4 million home LAN nodes shipped. Phone-line networks and power-line networks will make up the remainder, Wolf says.

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