But for the moment, Europe is still the market leader with over 57 million hotspots. One major driver of Wi-Fi hot spots is retail establishments. A prominent example is McDonalds, which has moved to add hotspots to 17% of its 4,000 locations.

The growing Wi-Fi hotspot market is fueling a demand for Wi-Fi access points. More than 675,000 access points will be shipped this year specifically for use in hotspots. Not only are hotspot deployments and their subscriber numbers growing, but ABI Research notes that there also has been a dramatic increase in the number of Wi-Fi sessions per subscriber. This means that subscribers are lingering longer and spending more time doing their e-mail and surfing the Internet.

Source: Unstrung