Five Years of Wi-Fi Chipsets: Five Times the Revenue, but 10x the Shipments

About 440 million Wi-Fi chipsets will be shipped over the course of 2008, according to market research firm ABI Research. This represents a tenfold increase over the number shipped in 2003; but over the same five-year period, the revenues they produced have multiplied by only five.

"The tenfold increase in Wi-Fi chipset shipments since 2003 paired with a fivefold increase in revenues in the same period clearly highlights the falling average selling prices (ASPs) that we have seen as this market further matures," says principal analyst Philip Solis. "Although ASPs got a small boost last year due to the introduction of higher-priced 802.11n chips, in general prices have fallen by about half, even though we're moving to more complex chipsets that increasingly use OFDM and MIMO technologies for 802.11n."

In 2007, Broadcom was the leading Wi-Fi chipset vendor. The company even widened its market lead over its competitors as it gained market share in the laptop segment.

The growth areas for this market in coming years will be found where Wi-Fi chips are embedded in more and more device types. Wi-Fi IC vendors should tailor their strategies accordingly. Consumer electronics (home theater equipment, gaming devices, portable media players), mobile handsets and computer peripherals will all see increased rates of Wi-Fi penetration. "While CE products will initially see more Wi-Fi inclusion," Solis continues, "we expect that by 2011 they will be overtaken by mobile handsets. Mobile Internet devices (MIDs) will become increasingly significant as well."