Wireless Networking Solutions

We first started tracking this category two years ago, when wireless started picking up in the country. So far, Cisco has managed to retain a comfortable lead over the others. Runner-up D-Link has slowly been gaining ground ever since.

However, the pace at which it's increasing its share of votes isn't fast enough to dethrone Cisco from the top spot anytime soon. 3Com continues to remain at the third spot, and has lost a little bit of ground over last year. Avaya Lucent continues to remain in the fourth position. None of the other known players such as Dax, Nortel, Allied Telesyn, etc could muster enough votes to make it to the club. The interesting thing is that there are lots of vendors offering wireless networking products at the entry level for homes and small offices, but only a handful are offering complete wireless networking solutions. Even amongst those handful, very few actually managed to to enter the Users' Choice Club. Moving to the brand loyalty, we find that Cisco continues to enjoy a strong brand loyalty amongst its existing customers, and has in fact strengthened it further compared to last year. Very few of those who're currently using Cisco wireless networking solutions want to shift to any other brand. Only 5% want to shift to D-Link, and another 5% want to shift to others. Both 3Com and D-Link are not very strong when it comes to brand loyalty. D-Link is under greater threat from Cisco than 3Com, as more of its existing users said they would move to Cisco. More customers want to shift from 3Com to D-Link than the other way around. Also, 15% of people who're currently using 3Com said they would like to move to Cisco. Avaya Lucent received very few votes, so assessing the brand loyalty for it didn't make sense. 

Brand Shift (%) 2003

We found that most of the wireless deployments were happening either in the North or South. In this, Cisco got the highest votes from the North, while D-Link got it from the South. 3Com seems to be fairly popular in the East, because of the people who voted from that region, the maximum voted for 3Com followed by D-Link. Cisco got the lowest support from there. Cisco was also by and large the primary choice amongst all industry verticals. It was only amongst the companies belonging to the services segment, where D-Link's votes equaled Cisco's. Amongst the BPO segment, 3Com managed to beat D-Link.

Coming to company size, most of the large enterprises with turnover exceeding 1000 crores voted for Cisco. D-Link was the most popular amongst mid-sized enterprises having a turnover that ranged between 100 to 250 crores. 3Com got lightly higher votes than D-Link from enterprises with turnovers ranging between 500 to 1000 crores. The order of preference seems to be quite clear from this.