The global Wi-Fi hotspot market is expected to reach USD 4 billion over the forecast period and it is projected to grow at an approximate CAGR of over 16% over the forecast period of 2016 to 2024. Surging use of mobile phones, tablets, and smart devices are expected to remain a key driving factor for market growth over the forecast period.
Increasing adoption of Wi-Fi hotspot market is expected to have the wide scope of applications in end–use industries such as public places, hospital, retail and education sectors. Increasing mobile data usage is also expected to spur the market growth over the next eight years.
Increased speeds, increased capacities, and reduced latencies, increased mobility and increasing the quality of service are the key drivers expected to increase the demand over the forecast period. Development of advanced network infrastructure is expected to be a key driver for the growth of network operators.
Restraints in the Wi-Fi hotspots market are owing to security concerns and meeting the bandwidth requirement of the applications.
Security concerns are due to data interception, misconfigured access points and wireless phishing. High infrastructure network cost, high maintenance cost, and high procurement cost are anticipated to hinder the market growth.
The shifting trend from mobile data usage to Wi-Fi hotspot or mobile hotspot for high quality and easy access are expected to offer lucrative growth opportunities to the industry participants. Multipath interference and high radio frequency range are expected to be the major challenges in the Wi-Fi hotspot market.
The market creates substantial opportunities over the forecast period. In a social, growing smartphone world, the pattern of arrangement of broadband connections is shifting and creating new requirements for the network operator.
The market has been classified on the basis of components such as gateways, controllers, and mobile devices. The controller specifies the location and size of the network, gateway caters authentication and authorization and mobile devices connect the nearby wireless device with the wireless network.
The market has been classified on the basis of software such as Wi-Fi security software, centralized hotspot management, Wi-Fi hotspot billing software, and cloud-based hotspot management. Wi-Fi security software provides confidentiality, data integrity, access control, encryption, and authentication.
Wi-Fi hotspot billing software generates the bill for the utilized data in a cyclic process. Cloud-based hotspot management is expected to drive the market over the forecast period. It is primary to ease the remote management of wireless network and it provides high network visibility, easy control, and low operational cost. Installation of Wi-Fi through cloud-based hotspot management reduces the cost of wifi and also enables the enterprise to have more flexibility and security.
The market has been segmented on the basis of industry vertical such as IT and telecom, education, healthcare, hospitality, transportation, retail and financial services. Surging IT & telecom sectors are expected to the drive the market for the next eight years.
The market has been segmented on the basis of service such as installation service, consulting service and professional service. Expertise is guided to provide service to the end-user.
The market has been segmented on the basis of end-use industries includes network operators and service providers, which provide the wireless network connections to the enterprises.
North America is expected to have significant growth over the forecast period owing to increasing demand for cloud-based management software. The U.S. is expected to be a dominating market over the forecast period owing to the development of innovative technologies offering advanced hardware and software for wireless networks.
The service providers are efficient in some of the countries such as China, Taiwan, and the U.S. Asia Pacific is also expected to have a substantial growth over the forecast period owing to increasing usage of smartphone, tablet, and other smart devices.
Some of the major players in the market include Ericsson, Cisco System, Ruckus Wireless, NovAtel, Franklin Wireless Corp., Samsung Electronics Co., NetComm Wireless Ltd., Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd., ZTE Corp., and Sierra Wireless Inc.
The leading player Cisco has undergone acquisition with Think Smart Technologies to enhance the Cisco’s network infrastructure. ThinkSmart technologies are expected to enhance the wireless network by providing location information and analytics to service provider and enterprise customer.
