Wi-Fi Alliance new certification process to ignite sales of 802.11n Draft 2.0 product

[Dashken]

The Wi-Fi Alliance's recent announcement that it will begin certifying products using the 802.11n Draft 2.0 specification starting in June is expected to help enhance customer confidence over pre-N products and therefore boost sales of 802.11n devices and help the industry migrate to 802.11n from 802.11g.

This statement is reasonable since the alliance has certified products for all of the preceding 802.11 standards, including 802.11a, 802.11b and 802.11g, and customers have trusted the alliance's certification marks and have purchased Wi-Fi products accordingly.

When the 802.11n Draft 1.0 standard was unveiled in March 2006, related chipmakers and network-equipment makers, especially those based in Taiwan, had hoped that the new standard would significantly help drive sales for the industry.

In fact, shipments of 802.11n Draft 1.0 products from Taiwan network-equipment makers have fluctuated drastically over the past year, and can not be said to be growing steadily.

With the exception of the third quarter of 2006 when shipments of 802.11n Draft 1.0-compatible routers exceed 10% of total router shipments from Taiwan-based makers, the ratio of 802.11n network cards and routers to total shipments of these two categories of products by Taiwan makers has not reached 10%, respectively, in any of the past four quarters.

In addition to pricing, a lack of confidence in 802.11n Draft 1.0 products was a key factor to lackluster sales of pre-N products over the past year.

Initially, pre-N routers were priced close to US$200 per unit and have only recently been slashed to below US$100. But the current prices are still nearly double the US$50 cost of a mainstream 802.11g model.

Although chipmakers Atheros Communications, Broadcom and Marvell jointly completed interoperability testing of WLAN devices built with 802.11n Draft 1.0-compliant chips from the three chip vendors at Computex Taipei 2006, consumers were still reluctant to pick up 802.11n Draft 1.0-compliant products as those products still lacked a certified mark from the Wi-Fi Alliance.

Things have been going better this year when the Wi-Fi Alliance announced in May its first-round list of chipmakers producing chips compliant with the 802.11n Draft 2.0 standard. The certified chip vendors include Intel, Atheros, Broadcom, Marvell and Taiwan-based Ralink Technology.

The upcoming certification process will not only certify interoperability for products using the 802.11n Draft 2.0 standard, but also backward interoperation with products certified for previous 802.11a, 802.11b and 802.11g standards. Products that are certified will display a new logo to let customers know that they have been certified.

Source: http://www.digitimes.com/systems/a20070604PD210.html