Worldwide wireless local area network (Lan) hardware revenue will double from $1.6bn (£1bn) last year to $3.2bn in 2006, industry analysts have predicted.

According to the quarterly worldwide market share and forecast service for the sector conducted by Infonetics Research, wireless Lan sales topped $608m in the second quarter of this year and will see slow and steady growth over the next four quarters, reaching $661m in the second quarter of 2004.

"Wireless Lans will continue to show solid growth in all enterprise markets in upcoming quarters," said Richard Webb, analyst at Infonetics Research and lead author of the report.

"Access-point products in particular will increasingly be designed to target either of these markets, with vendors beginning to differentiate between large and small/medium enterprise products, and carrier-class access points for hotspots."

Wireless broadband gateways, which enable cable/DSL connections, will also see healthy growth, driven by telecommuting for businesses and online gaming for consumers.

The service provider public access hotspot market will increase, the analyst predicted. "It's a small market now, but hotspots are gaining rapid acceptance as an inexpensive way for service providers to drive service subscriptions for an increasingly mobile yet data-reliant workforce," said Webb.

"Numerous service providers have indicated their intent to roll out hotspots, spurred on by advances in subscriber and network management systems."

Cisco and its recently acquired division Linksys each have 14 per cent of the worldwide total wireless Lan hardware revenue market share. The analyst said that Linksys was boosted by performance in the broadband wireless gateway segment, where it has a 27 per cent unit share and 21 per cent revenue share.

Other leading vendors, according to the study, include Buffalo, Netgear and D-Link, each with between nine per cent and 11 per cent of overall revenue share.