This week has been rather eventful in the WiFi land. Number of things happened that indicate a strong growth in this wireless industry and applications.
Ruckus Wireless went public at a valuation of $1.2 Billion. While initial public market reception was less than optimal, Ruckus has raised good amount of cash and continues to make great progress with new deployments.
Meraki got acquired for a hefty $1.2 Billion in cash (and yes, that is Billion!). Originally tipped by Greg Ferro in this tweet, the deal was formally announced today via a Cisco PR.
Previously, Cisco, in their Visual Networking forecast projected that by 2016, over half of world’s internet traffic is expected to come from WIFI connections. A large number of these connections happen at home and in public places where Social WIFI can play a great role.
Aruba Networks continues to perform strongly by focusing on Enterprise WIFI. Aruba clocked $541M in revenue over last 12 month and continues to be a powerhouse in WIFI space.
So how does it relate to Social WiFi, you may ask?
Earlier in this month, Facebook confirmed that it is experimenting with a WIFI product. This is a big deal in itself as the next phase of fight over SMB space heats up. Players like Yelp, Groupon, Foursquare, Facebook, Google Places, etc approach it from various angles. It is anyone’s guess if Facebook will be the only way to sign on to free wifi at public locations.
Overall trend points to the fact that next phase of growth in WIFI will be fueled by innovative applications that work on top of the access layer. Wavespot is such an application and we help get a positive return on investment for retail chains and local business alike by layering marketing capabilities.
