Linksys Ships Over 100,000 802.11g Products In First Month Of Sales

A pple made 802.11g the basis of AirPort Extreme, the next generation wireless networking technology that was released at MWSF 2003. 802.11g offers up to 54 Mbps, far more than the previous generation 802.11b technology used in the original AirPort.

There was almost a battle between the 802.11a, and the 802.11b/802.11g standards. 802.11a offers better throughput over 802.11b, but does not include any compatibility with the already established 802.11b flavor. With 802.11g including that backward compatibility, it would seem the momentum will stay with the technologies that Apple has dubbed the standard.

Apple, however, isnit the only one to choose 802.11g as the next wireless networking standard. Linksys began shipping its "Wireless-G" line of 802.11g equipment on December 24th of last year. In only one month, Linksys sold over 100,000 items. Included in the 100,000 figure are routers, base stations, PCM/CIA cards, and PCI adapters (Appleis AirPort Extreme products are compatible with other branded 802.11g products). According to Linksys, the "Wireless-G" line has been its fastest growing product line in the companyis history. From Linksys:

Linksys(R), the leading provider of wireless and broadband networking solutions, today announced the sales of over 100,000 Wireless-G products in North America since products began shipping on December 24, 2002. Designed to the IEEE 802.11g draft specification, the hundred thousand Wireless-G products sold consisted of a Linksys Wireless-G Router, Access Point, PC Card and PCI Adapter. The current most popular solutions are the router and the PC card. Linksys expects to ship more than 500,000 Wireless-G products during the first quarter (Q1) of this year.

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The Wireless-G products are selling mainly into to home, small office/home office (SOHO) and small/medium business because they run at speeds of up to 54Mbps which is almost five times faster than current 802.11b/11Mpbs solutions. Users are taking advantage of the price for performance benefit by equipping their networks for future applications that require the higher 54Mbps speeds such as security monitoring, video on demand, video conferencing and many others. The Wireless-G products also operate on the same 2.4GHz frequency band as 802.11b/Wi-Fi products so they are backward compatible with existing Wi-Fi certified IEEE 802.11b products as well as other products that display the 54g(TM) mark.

You can get more information at Linksysi Web site.