At the MediaTek Technology Conference on November 19, 2021, the standard for WiFi 7 was announced, and the theoretical speed reached 2.4 times the current WiFi 6E speed. Broadcom's WiFi-7 technology will be released in 2022. We thought we would be able to see more about WiFi 7 at this year's CES 2022 show, but it didn't. And now WiFi 6 is not as smooth as we think, there are still more than half of the WiFi 5 products on the market, so what is the problem?
01WiFi 6 routers only account for less than 45% of e-commerce There are still a large number of WiFi 5 for sale
WiFi 6 technology received high attention from the market when it was launched in 2019, followed by a large number of routers equipped with WiFi 6 technology, with product prices ranging from 150 yuan to thousands of yuan. From the overall pricing point of view, the wiFi 6-capable router is indeed slightly more expensive than the previous generation of WiFi 5, but it has not reached the unacceptable point at all. Why don't you take the initiative to buy WiFi 6 products?
In fact, the router is not like a notebook, with a few years to change one, the vast majority of users for the router requirements is to be able to connect to the Internet on the line, as for the speed of the network more depends on the package purchased by the operator. Therefore, router upgrades and replacements are not so frequent. There are still a large number of WiFi 5 router products in the market because of its competitive cost performance, and WiFi 5 technology is mature (such as Asus AC68U can brush Merlin firmware, the explosion of e-commerce blockbusters), dual-band Gigabit can also meet the user's home use. The advent of WiFi 6 routers did not delist WiFi 5 routers.
At present, taking Jingdong Mall as an example, among the router products sold, the main WiFi 6 technology products account for about 45% of the entire router search keywords. The price range of centralized purchase by users is 200 yuan-500 yuan. Compared with WiFi 6 routers, users prefer dual-pinned Gigabit WiFi 5 routers, and Asus and Netmatsu routers that can provide users with third-party plug-ins are more popular. In other words, when users choose a router, they do not pay too much attention to whether the router is a WiFi 6 product, but to see whether the router can support expansion and playability.
02 Carriers hinder the iteration of WiFi 6 routers
Nowadays, no matter whether the user handles home broadband from mobile, Unicom, or telecommunications, it will be forcibly bound by the operator to a wireless router, and the wireless router port is directly connected to the optical fiber, ordinary users cannot directly skip the router given by the operator and access the Internet, and all the expansion operations must be concentrated in the headset network of the operator router.
Conscientious operators will leave you a gigabit network cable port, and some small operators will simply disconnect the network cable for you to remove. Or the gigabit port network cable is only used for their own TV box, so that ordinary small white users have no way to start.
For users who do not understand the network at all, as long as there is a router that can access the Internet, they will no longer continue to consider tossing it. But for people with special needs, expanding a second router will consider what kind of router they buy, and what functions the router should have. From the perspective of user needs, whether it is a WiFi 6 router does not seem to be so important, but whether the annual bandwidth of the operator I bought matches my actual bandwidth, and whether the router can play the performance of the actual bandwidth.
In other words, if there is no carrier to force the installation of its own router (binding to the built-in set-top box function), then the sales of home WiFi 6 routers will increase by at least 20%. But operators are not stupid, since they have all received money, they must master the traffic port. Turn on the TV, in addition to being able to use the router to access the Internet, you can also watch paid TV programs to achieve the user's secondary consumption. Why not?
Editor's comments: The upgrade of technology is to allow users to enjoy better technical convenience and services, for end users, the operator's throttling does cause certain troubles to users to upgrade and expand the router, high-end players pay attention to playability, and do not care whether it is WiFi 6, ordinary players can use the operator's own route. I am afraid that the promotion of the WiFi 6 market is still in the commercial field.
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