Dell’Oro Group Projects Triple-Digit 2026 Enterprise Wi‑Fi 7 Revenue Growth and Earlier Wi‑Fi 8
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Dell’Oro Group projects triple-digit 2026 enterprise Wi-Fi 7 revenue growth and says Wi-Fi 7 will peak higher than prior Wi‑Fi versions. The report links pricing and access to memory components to how quickly vendors change access-point designs and when Wi‑Fi 8 adoption starts.
Market outlook for Wi‑Fi 7
Dell’Oro Group said it expects “triple-digit growth in Wi-Fi 7 revenue in 2026” and expects Wi‑Fi 7 revenue growth to continue for three more years. The firm also said that, in its peak year, enterprise class Wi‑Fi 7 will generate more revenue than Wi‑Fi 6E did over its entire lifecycle.
In the same forecast, Dell’Oro Group said “WLAN market revenue growth is expected, even if higher prices suppress some demand.” The firm also projected that public cloud-managed WLAN will grow faster than the overall market.
Pricing and memory components as a gating factor
Dell’Oro Group tied vendor pricing pressure to component availability and design changes, noting that higher prices affect how quickly vendors can adjust access-point designs. Siân Morgan said, “But the faster vendors can change AP designs to decrease dependency on the highest-cost memory components, the more competitive they can be pricewise.”
Morgan also connected these constraints to a shift toward Wi‑Fi 8, stating, “This represents a strong incentive to move to Wi-Fi 8.” The report says Wi‑Fi 8 introduction “may be brought forward to 2027” so vendors can “circumvent the lack of DDR4 memory chips.”
Software and management revenue
Dell’Oro Group said “AIOps features are driving software revenue higher” and that enterprise willingness to pay is evident in the data. The forecast highlights software revenue growth alongside the WLAN market’s overall revenue trajectory.
The firm’s Wireless LAN 5-Year July 2026 Forecast Report also points to public cloud-managed WLAN expanding faster than total WLAN across the forecast period. Dell’Oro Group further attributes the higher software revenue to AIOps feature adoption.
Analyst outlook and forecast scope
Dell’Oro Group characterized its Wireless LAN 5-Year Forecast Report as covering enterprise outdoor and indoor markets, plus WLAN controllers. It said the report includes tables with manufacturers’ revenue, average selling prices, and unit shipments by wireless standards including 802.11bn (Wi‑Fi 8) and 802.11be (Wi‑Fi 7).
The report also said the enterprise market forecast breaks out cloud versus premises managed and by macro region of the world. Dell’Oro Group specified that it forecasts multiple IEEE 802.11 generations and historical variants.
This Analyst Signals brief reflects a neutral, fact-based summary of the original research note.
Blog post, originally published at delloro.com.