Most PCs are getting the latest Wi-Fi technology, according to In-Stat and the Alliance. They said more than half of the mobile PCs shipped in 2008 were equipped with 802.11n draft 2.0 equipment. The Alliance began certifying products using this interim standard, which can support speeds over 100Mb per second, in June 2007.

Home networking and smartphones will also be significant drivers of Wi-Fi growth in 2009, according to In-Stat and the Wi-Fi Alliance. Shipments of Wi-Fi-enabled smartphones should grow twice as fast as for smartphones as a whole, they said.

Multiple network modes are the growing trend, both because many consumers want a choice of connectivity and because the incremental cost of adding Wi-Fi is minor, according to In-Stat's Bogen. There are some users of laptops and other Wi-Fi devices who don't mind searching out a hotspot and in some cases paying to use it, but for relatively uninterrupted Internet access, cellular data is needed, with Wi-Fi for a speed boost in certain spots, he said.

Ongoing silicon development is also bringing another big benefit to Wi-Fi device users, Bogen said: Smaller, more integrated and more efficient chipsets are draining less battery power, and that will only get better over the course of this year, he said.