For those of us who participate in the WLAN infrastructure industry, Apple’s product releases are important. Today, at the iPhone 11 product launch, we saw Apple place very little emphasis on WiFi capabilities of the new iPhones. But, based on a slide showing various new features about the new iPhones, the new phones use Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax), the new version of WLAN capabilities. Since consumers who purchase new iPhones will have this new capability and will bring their phones to work/school/venues/transportation, we expect this will drive demand for a refresh of the infrastructure to serve these newer phones.
We have already seen 100’s of thousands of enterprise Access Points with Wi-Fi 6 capabilities ship to enterprises as of the second calendar quarter 2019, especially to organizations with large users populations such as universities and public venues. This event is important because Apple is a leading smartphone vendor, and it just launched WiFi 6 phones available as soon as September 20, 2019; this launch should drive demand for WiFi 6 and lead us to millions of enterprise-class Access Points in 2020 and beyond.