Despite turbulent times, Wi-Fi has had some stellar years -- but that pales in comparison to what's to come. In particular, 2023 looks to be a transformative year for the Wi-Fi industry, as multiple tributaries converge, bringing with them a wealth of new use cases, innovation, and growth opportunities. Below is an overview of the most recent industry review published by the Wi-Fi Alliance.

Arguably, no wireless technology in history has advanced faster than Wi-Fi over the past few years, and that progress has been largely unaffected by global socioeconomic turmoil. This steep evolutionary climb will continue in 2023, likely even more forcefully, as much of the industry’s ongoing standardization and regulatory efforts bear fruit. The Wi-Fi Alliance published this blog that succinctly outlines the trends and opportunities for 2023.

The great wireless Swiss army knife of Wi-Fi keeps adding more blades and tools, so the opportunities for innovation and development are multiplying. One of the most elegant technological inventions of 2022 introduces Wi-Fi into the new Matter standard for the Internet of Things. This means that the era of interoperable smart home IoT has finally begun. As evidenced by CES, there is no doubt that Matter will start to bear fruit in 2023.

In many ways, Matter and Wi-Fi are the perfect match: Wi-Fi will provide secure, standardized IP-native connectivity for any type of IoT device (battery-powered or otherwise) and will support the vast majority of use cases, from Smart home IoT started and expanded to industrial and enterprise in the next few years.

Meanwhile, Wi-Fi IoT has also had a stellar year in another direction – namely Wi-Fi HaLow. Not much is known about Wi-Fi HaLow right now, but that could change in 2023. The technology was defined by the Wi-Fi Alliance in 2016 as a Wi-Fi standard and certification program, and 2022 is a breakthrough year, HaLow chipset supplier Morse Micro received a large-scale financing, released a few weeks ago the world's The first Wi-Fi HaLow device: a security camera.

But the biggest transformation and success story – which becomes evident in 2022 and will accelerate this year – is arguably the expanding adoption of the 6 GHz band around the world. The new frequency bands are now available in 60 countries, the Wi-Fi Alliance said. According to the latest information from Intel, more than 1,200 Wi-Fi 6E devices are currently in commercial use (although not all of them are Wi-Fi certified). The Wi-Fi Alliance says it expects Wi-Fi 6E to continue expanding its market reach to support high-density connectivity applications in stadiums, arenas, campus networks and healthcare.

In the blog, the Wi-Fi Alliance also emphasized the importance of Wi-Fi certification. This is the cornerstone of the growing Wi-Fi ecosystem, and key projects include Wi-Fi CERTIFIED EasyMesh and Wi-Fi CERTIFIED QoS Management.

Finally, we hope to add location-based Wi-Fi services to the list of innovations to watch in 2023. A lot of work has gone into developing and bringing to market new technologies based on the 802.11 standard that will reduce the accuracy of Wi-Fi-based location services to less than 10 centimeters.