Wi-Fi undergoing 'fundamental shift'

Wireless local area network (Lan) - or Wi-Fi - technology is undergoing a "fundamental shift" as embedded Mini PCI card adaptors take over from PC card adaptors as the dominant access devices, new research has claimed.

According to analyst In-Stat/MDR, removable PC card Wi-Fi devices were displaced in 2003 by embedded chips for the first time as the most popular Wi-Fi adaptor.

"The Wi-Fi Mini PCI card represented 49.1 per cent of the Wi-Fi adaptors shipped, and enabled most of the Wi-Fi mobile PCs (e.g. notebook and tablet PCs) in 2003," said In-Stat/MDR analyst Norm Bogen in a statement.

"Conversely, PC cards held a quickly eroding 38.8 per cent market share in 2003 after dominating the market with a 58.3 per cent market share in 2002."

In-Stat/MDR said that it expects the Wi-Fi Mini PCI card to continue to capture an increasing percentage of the total Wi-Fi adaptor market over the next five years.

The analyst firm predicts that the market for embedded Wi-Fi clients (including mobile PCs, PDAs and phones) will grow at a 66.2 per cent Compound Annual Growth Rate to 226 million units shipped in 2008.

After five years of healthy growth since its mainstream commercialisation, the worldwide Wi-Fi hardware market finally surpassed $1bn in quarterly revenues, according to In-Stat/MDR's research paper, Wi-Fi Inside: The Embedded Wi-Fi Paradigm.

The study also found that there has been a "significant growth" in Wi-Fi-enabled notebook PCs, with 55 per cent of the 32.1 million notebook PCs shipped in 2003 containing embedded Wi-Fi adaptors.