WiFi 6 or 802.11ax chipsets are forecast to break the 1 billion annual shipments barrier by 2022, just three years after the first commercial deployments expected for 2019, according to analyst firm ABI Research.

Although it has taken several years to develop and ratify, market adoption of the standard is anticipated to be swifter than the rollout of 5G technologies. For example, while it took only a couple of years to ratify the first 5G standard, shipments of 5G enabled devices are expected to reach 1 billion six years after the first commercial launches.