Market Overview

Growth in IP traffic, the transition towards the cloud for data storage are a few factors driving the growth of the market, whereas security and privacy concerns are inhibiting its growth rate. Moreover, with the growing smart homes market, residential routers market is bound to increase.

  • A significant increase in demand for connected devices, such as smartphones, smartwatches, and tablets is recorded. As these devices need to be connected to the internet for most of its functions, the residential routers market is bound to increase. Moreover, in smart homes, every device will require an internet connection to work properly.
  • Further, the demand for connectivity in homes will also increase, thus, boosting the router market. The wired router market is also anticipated to grow, owing to the rising number of fixed broadband subscribers. The Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development predicted that the number of fixed broadband subscribers to increase from 884 million in 2016 to 1,000 million in 2017.
  • February 2018- Nokia introduced several enhancements to its in-home Wi-Fi solution that maximize Wi-Fi performance and simplify network management. The new Wi-Fi solution expanded Nokia’s portfolio with meshed Wi-Fi gateways and beacons, which delivers a new Wi-Fi Home Portal for service providers.
  • However, increasing threat of security breaches is restraining the market to grow during the forecast period.


Scope of the Report

A residential gateway is a small consumer-grade router which provides network access between local area network (LAN) hosts to a wide area network (WAN) via a modem. The modem may or may not be integrated into the hardware of the residential gateway. The advantage of wired routers over wireless routers is that they can provide a more stable connection than the latter.

Key Market Trends

Gigabit Ethernet Account for Largest Market Share

  • Gigabit Ethernet was introduced in 1999, however, gained popularity in 2010. Since then, it is widely used around the world. With the increasing use of Wi-Fi-enabled devices and gadgets in homes, the networking need is likely to expand beyond the capacity of the basic Wi-Fi router. Moreover, with an increase in the number of gadgets, the bandwidth and traffic are going to increase, which if left unaddressed can overload the router. Gigabit routers have emerged as the most viable solution to address this problem.
  • To have a gigabit Ethernet connection, both the router and the cable need to support Gigabit Ethernet. Gigabit Ethernet caps at 1 Gbps, but in actual, the speed varies from 45 to 100 Mbps. The actual speed varies because of a few factors, like the quality of the cable, the number of end devices, and the amount of traffic.
  • March 2018- Nokia acquired Unium, a Seattle-based software company that specializes in solving complex wireless networking problems for use in mission-critical and residential Wi-Fi applications



United States Account for Largest Market Share

  • The increasing rate of adoption of smart homes, with 30 million US households, is also favoring the market conditions for wireless routers. Various state governments are promoting the rate of adoption of smart homes. In 2016, the US government initiated a program, ’ConnectALL’ to aid Americans at every income level use online services and tools, in order to take full advantage of the Internet. Thus, this initiative is promoting the market penetration of fixed broadband services.
  • Altice Group, a European telecom giant, acquired Suddenlink Communications to enter the US market and rebranded itself as Altice USA. Moreover, Frontier acquired Verizon’s Wireline assets in three western states for nearly USD 10.5 billion.
  • According to a recent study by United States Broadband Association, there were nearly 76% of wireless voice connections compared to wired voice connections as of 2017. All these factors are likely to promote the adoption rates of both wired and wireless routers for broadband services.



Competitive Landscape

The Residential Routers Market is highly fragmented due to the availability of a large number of players in matured markets such as Europe and America. Some key players in the market include Google, D link, TP-Link Technologies Co, Ltd. Some key recent developments in the market include:

  • March 2019- Netgear has launched a new router for gamers, showing that the networking company is covering all the bases in gear for all types of gamers. The new Nighthawk Pro Gaming XR300 WiFi Router is aimed at reducing lag for console players in particular. The router lets the user reduce lag through geo-filtering. Or the user can improve performance by allocating bandwidth to specific apps such as streams or games. It can control the maximum upload and download speeds per device on the network to minimize sudden lag spikes while gaming.
  • January 2019- D-Link’s announced that a new 5G NR router will come into the market by end of 2019 which will only need electricity and a SIM card and eliminate the cable. Instead of plugging D-Link’s DWR-2010 5G NR router into a prehistoric coaxial cable it will simply suck high-speed internet from the sub-6 GHz and mmWave frequencies that 5G will rely on, and distribute it amongst all the connected devices in the home using the tried-and-true local wifi network that was already designed to connect to.



Reasons to Purchase this report:

  • The market estimate (ME) sheet in Excel format
  • Report customization as per the client’s requirements
  • 3 months of analyst support