Sales of Wi-Fi phones increased by more than 60% last year, according to Infonetics Research, as vendors have done more to support wireless IP telephony.

Last year vendors sold 682,000 Wi-Fi phones worldwide, compared with 358,000 in 2006. There are several explanations for the increase.

"IP telephony has matured, and wireless LANs have also matured. Companies started to build wireless LANs to put data on them, but now they are looking for other applications," said Richard Webb, directing analyst, WiMAX, Wi-Fi, and Mobile Devices, at Infonetics Research.

Vendors such as Cisco and Aruba Wireless Networks have also added features to network hardware to make wireless IP telephony an easier proposition compared with a couple of years ago. Interoperability tests have also helped, according to Webb.

The sales increase is impressive, according to Webb. But the Wi-Fi phone market is only a couple of years old and even if the market shows high growth rate it is compared to low volumes.

The Wi-Fi phone market is dominated by Cisco and Polycom, which both had 33% of the market during the fourth quarter of last year. Cisco especially has seen a high growth.

"In the beginning of the year Cisco was behind Polycom, but over time it caught up, thanks to its enterprise sales muscle," said Webb.

Over time mobile phones with support for Wi-Fi will take over, but there will still be a market for Wi-Fi phones, according to Webb.

"Not all companies want to give employees a mobile phone," said Webb.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.

Whitepapers

• File Integrity Monitoring: Secure Your Virtual and Physical IT Environments
• Boost Productivity While Cutting Costs with Next-generation Collaboration
• Deploying Virtualized NetWare on Linux Whitepaper
• Driving Business Success Through Workgroup Choice and Flexibility
• Toward More Flexible, Next-Generation Collaboration Solutions
• Creating Lifestyle Community Portals to Drive Revenue Opportunities

View more WIRELESS & MOBILE whitepapers

Webcasts

• Intelligent Mobility: BlackBerry Technical Seminar 2008
• PoE Plus: Impact on the PoE Market
• Creating a high performance workplace with wireless networking
• Harnessing the power of communications to increase workplace performance
• Making data centers the IT strategic focus
• Protecting assets and employees with IP Video Surveillance

View more WIRELESS & MOBILE webcasts

Special Reports

• Ethernet Services: WAN options mature

View more WIRELESS & MOBILE special reports