Type of Article: MacTech Blog

The worldwide Wi-Fi customer premises equipment market including access points, routers and gateways shipments surpassed 139.1 million in 2013. 802.11ac access point adoption is starting to gain market share, representing 8% of the total consumer access point market in 2013, according to ABI Research (http://www.abiresearch.com).

More device manufacturers started to ship 802.11ac products in 2013; the majority of them provide dual-band access to support existing 802.11n devices.

Technology Business Research Inc.’s “Cloud Professional Services Customer Report” shows demand for cloud professional services continues to escalate, with more than 74% of enterprise clients, compared to 59% in 2011, purchasing or considering purchasing cloud computing services engaged with a cloud professional services vendor for assistance.

The Parks Associates research group (www.parksassociates.com) has released mobile industry research showing roughly 29% of U.S. broadband users watch video on a mobile phone monthly, with the average user watching 1.7 hours of video on a mobile phone each week.

Consumer exposure to advanced recommendations engines will grow to reach 75% of Pay TV households on multiscreen services and 55% on set-top boxes within North America by 2018, up from 20% and 10% in 2013, respectively, according to ABI Research (http://www.abiresearch.com).

This significant growth is driven by today’s highly competitive viewer landscape for Pay TV and OTT operators, says the research group. At the core of this are search, recommendation and discovery technologies that rely heavily on rich metadata as well as user analysis and learning.

According to ABI Research’s “Mobile Internet Pricing Q1-2014 Market Data,” more than 55% of the cheapest country tariff plans are 4G compared to just 22% a year ago. This has been driven by the aggressive deployment of LTE networks and a wider choice of consumer-centric LTE smartphones.