Consumers to outpace business WWAN modem sales

When cellular or WWAN modems were first released they were seen more as a business tool for keeping a sales force connected with the corporate office no matter where they are. Now it seems that consumers have caught on to the convenience of having access to the Internet anywhere and are expected to outpace business sales of WWAN modems for the first time.

A study by ABI Research finds that next year 51% of these modems will ship to consumers with most them being USB. By 2014, consumers are expected to account for 63% of purchases. What about integrated modems you may ask? The study shows that adoption of integrated cellular modems into laptops and netbooks is slow with less than 5% of devices having them this year. By 2014, integrated modems will leap to account for 48% of laptops and netbooks shipped.

It’s surprising that the projection for integrated modems seems to be so low. I expect that as wireless carriers begin to offer more subsidized netbooks with integrated modems we will see greater adoption. It seems to me if netbooks are going to continue to take up a greater market share of notebook shipments than netbooks with integrated modems would follow suit.