A report from ABI Research projects that Wi-Fi chipset vendors will ship 1 billion units by 2011. By the end of the following year, a cumulative 5 billion such chipsets will have shipped since the firm began tracking Wi-Fi chipsets in 2000.
“802.11n will be the dominant protocol shipped during 2010, and there will be no looking back as single stream 11n chipsets (those not employing MIMO technologies) increasingly replace 802.11g products,” stated research practice director Philip Solis in a press release.
One reason for the high number of shipments is the ever increasing number of devices that are Wi-Fi enabled. The report concludes that Wi-Fi chipset shipments will total well over 100 million just for smartphones this year. However, netbooks and a variety of consumer electronics devices, such as portable media players, TVs and cameras, will become increasingly important market segments as well.
The report sites Qualcomm as an emerging player in the Wi-Fi chipset market, but notes that Broadcom is the clear leader.