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VoWLAN: Bracing for Dynamic Market Forces

San Diego, CA (PR Web) January 15, 2004-- A recently released market review by wireless research firm ON World illustrates the extreme market forces developing in the Voice over WLAN (VoWLAN) market.

"The rapid growth of both Wi-Fi and Voice over IP makes the VoWLAN market one of the best opportunities for developers today," says Mareca Hatler, ON World's Director of Research.

The ON World review has identified the following forces that are driving the VoWLAN market:

Hyper Market Growth

ON World projects that the VoWLAN handset segment will grow by more than 89 percent annually until 2007 when there will be more than 653,000 VoWLAN handsets shipped. This segment, however, is small compared to the overall Wi-Fi equipment market that ON World projects will growth by a 40 percent compound annual growth rate over the next five years to reach more than 157 million units shipped in 2009. This represents a huge market for wireless softphone developers with software that transforms Wi-Fi enabled laptops and handheld computers in to phones.

Industry Convergence

As Wi-Fi equipment expands in the home and enterprise, Wi-Fi enabled laptops, handhelds and soon: mobile phones will also proliferate. ON World projects that more than 85 percent of all cell phones shipped in 2008 will be Wi-Fi enabled. With more than 850 million cell phones predicted to ship in 2009, this represents an extremely large market.

"We believe that dual mode (Wi-Fi/cellular) mobile phones will be the most significant development in the VoWLAN landscape," says Hatler. "As network operators embrace Wi-Fi as an extension of their networks, they will depend on solutions to enable them to monetize voice as well as data applications," she says. "Network operators have much to gain by attracting more enterprise subscribers and VoWLAN is one solution to help them do this. Enterprise users tend to have nearly three times the average revenue per user (ARPU) with less churn than the typical consumer user, Hatler says."

Companies such as Kineto Wireless, BridgePort Networks and RadioFrame Networks are already developing solutions that smoothly pave the way for the inevitable convergence between mobile and enterprise communications. The rapid growth of hotspots will also ensure this convergence. ON World projects that there will be more than 700,000 hotspots worldwide by 2009.

Many New Entrants

Until recently the VoWLAN market consisted of only a very small handful of competitors such as SpectraLink and Symbol Technologies but this is changing rapidly. New entrants such as Vocera Communications with its hands-free, natural speech solution has been grabbing many new customers over the past six to nine months such as Denver Health Medical Center, Long Beach Memorial, and El Camino hospital, Target Corporation and the US Senate. Additional new players that are gaining much attention include wireless softphone developers such as TeleSym, IP Blue and Vedic Technologies with many more expected once related standards have been completed.

Emergence of New Technologies and Standards

As Voice over IP (VoIP) and Wi-Fi continue rapid growth, related technologies and standards will emerge to drive VoWLAN by increasing competition and making it more attractive to end users. A few of these standards include Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), the IEEE's 802.11e quality of service standard and the Telecommunication Industry Association's in-progress standardization for VoIP Gateways and WLAN infrastructures. On Monday, SpectraLink announced it would be pushing for a new IEEE task group to develop a standard for secure voice roaming across wide scale enterprise deployments.

ON World's "VoWLAN: Market Forces Review" includes leading market dynamics models such as Michael Porter's Five Forces, GE's 3 X 3 and Boston Consulting Group's Matrix. It also includes overall market size projections on several related markets, intellectual property, venture capital flow, key people and events with full URL sources for more in-depth browser based study. The review costs US$129 and it may be purchased from ON World's website at: http://www.onworld.com/html/vowlanmrktforces.htm.

About ON World:
ON World provides world class business intelligence on emerging wireless technology markets. More information about ON World's research services and products may be found from http://www.onworld.com.

Media Contact: Mareca Hatler, eMail
Phone: 858.259.2397