Consumer WiFi Router Market - Forecasts from 2020 to 2025

The global consumer Wi-Fi router market was valued at US$6.701 billion in 2019 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 4.74% over the forecast period to reach a total market size of US$8.847 billion in 2025. The internet, which is seen as one of the major contributors to the development of civilizations, has become a key to unlocking innovation, development and social progress across the globe. It doesn’t come as a surprise that the explosive growth phase for internet has passed and it is now marking its entry into the power conversion phase. One of the indicators for this position is continuously shifting focus from connecting people with one another to connecting everything and everyone with everything and everyone. Cyberspace can now be seen as the dimension where revolution of the world’s governance system is taking place at a fast pace. Increasing penetration of digital technologies into our societies continues to open doors to immense opportunities for the entities which are connected, but at the same time, it sculptures digital illiteracy as the inclusion’s new frontier. Today, reliable access to the internet and emergence of innovative services can both be seen pouring in their bit for the fulfilment of Sustainable Development Goals set forth by the United Nations. Not just this, these two factors have been successful in giving people better access to advanced public health, more improved and flexible education services, next-generation of technology-driven financial services, which include, but are not confined to, mobile payments, and connected energy infrastructure among many other benefits. Mobile devices with internet connectivity have evolved into gateways to the vast digital economy. Continuous flow of huge investments into the roll-out of next generation mobile networks have successfully led to a very significant shrinkage in the coverage gap which had been keeping a large share of the global population unconnected to the internet. Players across the ecosystem are working rigorously towards driving down the cost of deployment of wireless internet technologies by pumping investments into key sectors including power, base station technologies and backhaul as part of their plan to expand the accessibility to sustainable networks across regions. While this landscape is witnessing a continuous evolution, wireless internet access enabling solutions like Wi-Fi routers are also enjoying a continuous growth in their demand, not just by enterprises, but also by consumers.

The market growth for consumer Wi-Fi routers is majorly attributed to increasing need among people to remain connected to a reliable internet, and improving affordability of Wi-Fi connections across many countries. A data from the Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development sheds light on changing cost of bandwidth. Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development is a joint initiative by the International Telecommunication Union and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, which was set up to continuously track and promote access of people to broadband networks in order to aid the United Nations in achieving goals like Millennium Development Goals. According to the Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development, international prices for IP transit saw a decline at the compounded annual growth rate of 27% between 2015 and 2018. According to the entity, mobile broadband plans have been witnessing a progressive decline in their prices, and this decline is more significant in developing nations than that in developed economies. The data shows that the average affordability of a 1GB data plan was best in South Asia where they costed around 1.2% of monthly income. On the other hand, the affordability was worst in Sub-Saharan Africa where 6.8% of monthly income would go into buying a 1GB internet plan.

On the bright side, the affordability of 1GB internet plan in Sub-Saharan Africa showed a significant improvement over that in 2016 when it took around 13.2% of the monthly income to buy a 1 GB data plan. While progress is significant, the entity is still working towards improving affordability. The Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development, in the year 2018, set a target to bring down the cost of entry level broadband services in developing countries to around 2% of the Gross National Income per capita by 2025. Although this target was achieved in four LDCs by 2018, their still remains a big room to fill. Improving affordability of internet plans and proven convenience and reliability offered by Wi-Fi is steering many people towards it, thus driving the demand for consumer Wi-Fi routers. The need to stay connected to the internet is also increasing as people are becoming more aware of the value held by the internet. Education, for instance, is one of the many sectors which have been witnessing a continuously increasing penetration of digital technologies into them. Educational institutions throughout the globe are showing a rapidly increasingly rate of adoption of cloud across various functions ranging from enquiries and admission to teaching, learning and collaboration between teachers, students and industry experts.

According to a data from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Institute for Information Technologies in Education report, the world would see the adoption of online primary and higher education through the cloud nearly double by the year 2025. There has been a continuous increase in the number of students, both across schools and colleges, who own at least one connected device including tablets, smartphones and laptops. Schools in many regions across the globe are leveraging mobile devices to improve the access to their curriculum content by students and their parents from home. This has been driving with it the adoption of advanced virtualization technologies by many educational institutions across countries as they seek to push educational content to online platforms in order to facilitate access to them students in other states and countries through mobile devices. Mississippi city-based Biloxi Public School (BPS), for instance, uses HVE ConneXions (HVE) Virtual Desktop Infrastructure technology by Sphere 3D Corp. in order to expand and strengthen their classroom VDI environment. While this is just one example, educational institutions of all sizes, which are struggling with maintaining a balance between their budgets and headcount, are adopting tools to use latest technologies in order to offer higher quality of education to students. Since this mode of education holds a lot of value and even more untapped potential, students are getting more inclined towards online education. Fairly high bandwidth requirement for this purpose, and presence of a large number of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) across the globe offering tailored data plans for customers in different income brackets, is increasing the adoption of home Wi-Fi among people, thus propelling the consumer Wi-Fi router market.

Furthermore, outbreak of the novel coronavirus disease in Wuhan, China in the beginning of this year, and its continuous spread throughout the globe has also been shaping the market growth significantly. As the disease spread broke the barriers of geographies and got declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization, governments imposed lockdowns and nearly all industrial and business activity came to a halt. Businesses, which already had a fairly strong IT infrastructure in place, implemented Work from Home (WFH) policy in order to minimize impact of lockdown on their productivity. As working from home requires a good internet connectivity, demand for Wi-Fi surged significantly this year. This increase in demand for Wi-Fi is driving with it the sales of Wi-Fi routers, thus augmenting the market growth.

Geographically, the consumer Wi-Fi router market has been segmented into North America, South America, Europe, Middle East and Africa, and Asia Pacific. To give a clearer view of the market, these regional markets have been further segmented into countries which account for a considerable market share. North America and Europe are somewhat mature markets in this landscape since high disposable income of people and early adoption of new technologies across these countries has already led to a high penetration of Wi-Fi across households. In conjunction to this, continuous advancements in technologies, on account of huge investments by industry players, are improving the performance of wireless internet technologies, which is fuelling the adoption of Wi-Fi among people. Asia Pacific consumer Wi-Fi market is expected to witness a robust growth over the projected period. Rising disposable income of people in this region can be seen as a key reason for this robust growth. As standard of living of people is witnessing a continuous improvement, more households are adopting Wi-Fi for better internet connectivity. Declining IP bandwidth rates across this region, on account of huge investments by ISPs in this region, is also contributing to the market growth. This region still has a lot of untapped potential which will be sought to be tapped by market players over the period.

Competitive Insights

Prominent key market players in the global Consumer Wi-Fi Router market include NETGEAR, ASUSTeK Computer Inc., eero LLC, TP-Link Corporation Limited, D-Link Corporation, and Belkin International, Inc. among others. These companies hold a noteworthy share in the market on account of their good brand image and product offerings. Major players in the portfolio management system market have been covered along with their relative competitive position and strategies. The report also mentions recent deals and investments of different market players over the last two years.

Segmentation

By Type

• Wireless G
• Wireless N
• Wireless AC

By Geography

• North America
• USA
• Canada
• Mexico
• South America
• Brazil
• Argentina
• Others
• Europe
• UK
• Germany
• France
• Spain
• Others
• Middle East and Africa
• Saudi Arabia
• Israel
• UAE
• Others
• Asia Pacific
• China
• Japan
• India
• South Korea
• Others