Factors such as the increasing penetration of smartphones, surging adoption of the big data technology, and rising public Wi-Fi deployment are expected to drive the growth of the Wi-Fi analytics market at a CAGR of 24.2% in the foreseeable period (2020–2030). According to P&S Intelligence, the market size will increase from $5,210.0 million in 2019 to $52,975.5 million by 2030. Moreover, the market is witnessing the surging adoption of social media, which plays a major role in customer engagement and communication.
One of the key factors driving the growth of the Wi-Fi analytics market is the rising number of public Wi-Fi networks. The deployment of public Wi-Fi is increasing due to the surging penetration of smartphones, tablets, and other internet-connected devices. The adoption of public Wi-Fi hotspots will witness fourfold growth during 2018–2023 as such networks meet the surging need for bandwidth, which encourages operators to increase their capacity to cater to the requirement of subscribers.
Another factor propelling the market growth is the increasing usage of smartphones. For instance, as per the GSM Association, the number of unique mobile subscribers is expected to reach around 5.8 billion by 2025, accounting for 70% of the world population then. Among these, about 80% will be smartphone users, primarily from countries like China, India, Nigeria, and Pakistan. Thus, the surging adoption of smartphones around the world is driving the demand for Wi-Fi analytics as they are the primary sources to collect data.
The Wi-Fi analytics market is bifurcated into Wi-Fi marketing analytics and Wi-Fi presence analytics, based on application. Between the two, the Wi-Fi presence analytics category accounted for the larger share in the market in 2019 as presence analytics provides real-time information of customers using Wi-Fi networks, which includes data on repeat visitors, first-time visitors, physical location, and dwell time. This data offers companies detailed insights into the consumer behavior and helps in engaging the customers directly, to increase their business opportunities.
Moreover, the end use segment of the Wi-Fi analytics market is categorized into retail, smart infrastructure, hospitality, transportation, sports and entertainment, healthcare, and others. Among these, the smart infrastructure category accounted for the largest market share in 2019. This is ascribed to the fact that this technology helps the municipal bodies of cities observe the behavior of people during busy office hours and assess how long they are stuck in high-traffic zones. By deploying these solutions, smart cities are improving their citizen engagement and operations.
Geographically, North America held the largest share in the Wi-Fi analytics market in 2019 owing to the presence of key industry players, early development and adoption of advanced technologies, and high financial stability in the region. Whereas, the Asia-Pacific (APAC) market is projected to witness the most-rapid advance during the foreseeable period. This can be ascribed to the increasing number of smartphone users, surging internet penetration, and rising adoption of this technology in several sectors of major APAC countries.
Thus, the rising number of smartphone users and the surging public Wi-Fi deployment across the globe are expected to propel the market growth in the coming years.
