Market research firm In-Stat believes that even though several companies initiated shipments of equipment compatible with draft 802.11n wireless local area networks (WLAN) standard, the market will shift to the new standard at a much slower pace compared to the transition to 802.11g.

“Buyers of these Draft n products are early adopters willing to pay two to three times the price of standard 802.11g products. In-Stat expects the transition to 802.11n will be bumpier than that from 802.11b to 802.11g,” said In-Stat analyst Victoria Fodale.

Although the much-heralded IEEE 802.11n WLAN standard is probably a good year away from formal ratification, end-products based on 802.11n draft 1.0 of the standard were released from a handful of vendors in Q2 2006. Approximately 300 thousand total 802.11n draft 1.0 routers, clients and access points shipped out from home and SMB networking specialists Linksys, D-Link, Netgear, Buffalo and Belkin. 

“During the first quarter that In-Stat started tracking shipments of 802.11g products, in 1Q03, shipments totaled 900 thousand 802.11g units. Additionally, 2Q is typically a slow quarter, and it will be interesting to see how vendors position Draft n products within their traditional 3Q back-to-school and holiday promotions,” Ms. Fodale said.

On the 802.11n chipset side, 802.11n draft 1.0 (Draft n) chipsets from Atheros, Broadcom and Marvell are powering 802.11n draft 1.0 end-products. Additionally, Intel is set to release its Kedron 802.11n wireless module within its Santa Rosa mobile platform in early 2007, even though the standard will not be ratified by then. Consequently, there is much pressure on Task Group N within the IEEE 802.11 Working Group to come up with a more solid standard to put PC OEMs more at ease with the thought of embedding Draft n solutions into mobile PCs.

“Although we expect Draft n/802.11n chipsets to be only 3.6 percent of total WLAN chipset shipments for 2006, In-Stat expects this percentage to grow to almost 20 percent in 2007,” said In-Stat Senior analyst Gemma Tedesco. “Although 802.11g will remain strong in some segments, such as in Portable Consumer Electronics devices, over the next three to four years, 802.11n is the future and eventually all product segments will shift to this standard.”