­A recent report has revealed that the worldwide Wireless LAN (WLAN) market achieved a record higher in 2010 as revenues grew by 25% to surpass $5 billion. The report has also shown that  the small office, home office (SOHO) segment surpassed $3 billion, while the Enterprise WLAN segment grew at its fastest rate since 2006 to exceed $2 billion in 2010.

According to researchers, the enterprise WLAN segment has now seen seven straight quarters of revenue growth, having pushed its way over the $500 million mark for the first time in the third quarter of 2010, and then over the $600 million mark in the fourth quarter.

Enterprise WLAN vendors recognized continued strength from the education and healthcare vertical segments, but also saw a corresponding rise from their general enterprise sales as well. Researchers believe this to be another sign of the continued importance of wireless LAN to companies’ networking infrastructures, and of a worldwide economy that is on the upswing. Almost all enterprise WLAN vendors had at least modest quarterly revenue gains in the fourth quarter, but Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, and Aruba each posted quarterly revenue gains of more than 10%.

According to the report, the following vendors each posted full-year 2010 WLAN revenue growth that exceeded 40 percent: Alcatel-Lucent, Aruba, Belkin, NETGEAR, Tropos, and ZyXEL.