In its report, ‘Voice over Wireless LAN: 802.11x Hears the Call for Wireless VoIP,’ the research firm said additional demand from verticals such as education, healthcare, retail and logistics will help the overall Voice over Wireless LAN market to expand to over 80,000 handset shipments in 2002, a significant jump from 20,000 in 2001.

The firm reported that annual shipments of voice over 802.11x handsets are expected to surpass half a million units by 2006, accounting for revenues of over a quarter of a million annually.

"Even though the market is projected to grow significantly, there is currently not much demand for wireless voice beyond education, healthcare, and retail markets," said Brian Strachman, an analyst with In-Stat/MDR. VoWLAN vendors are betting "that if the solution is easy and cheap enough to implement, it will eventually find its way into areas outside of the traditional three."

At present there are only two vendors in the VoWLAN handset market, Symbol and Spectralink, but "as the demand for voice over WLAN increases, more, and larger, vendors are expected to enter the market, bringing handset prices down, and pushing VoWLAN handsets out to the more mainstream business environments," said Gemma Paulo, analyst with the firm.

The report examines the VoWLAN market, focusing on wireless handsets that support 802.11x WLAN technology, and providing an overview of both the Wireless LAN and LAN Telephony markets as well as an explanation of VoWLAN architecture and equipment.

For more information: http://www.instat.com