“The ubiquity of Wi-Fi has created hotspot coverage as an expected amenity at many places of business,” says Frank Dickson, In-Stat analyst. “While consumer or leisure users do not often carry a laptop, they do have Wi-Fi enabled handhelds and are using these devices to access hotspots. This, coupled with the service being bundled with mobile plans, is making hotspot access much more consumer-oriented compared to the service’s former business focus.”

Handhelds accounted for 35 percent of all hotspot connections in 2009, up from 20 percent in 2008, and are forecast to account for fully half of them by 2011, according to market research firm, In-Stat,. The research firm estimates that the hotspot usage on the whole will increase 47 percent in 2009, bringing the total number of connections to 1.2 billion. A report by JiWire estimates that during the first half of 2009, the number of Wi-Fi hotspots around the world grew by 9 percent.

According to In-Stat research, WiFi-enabled devices such as game players, personal media players and cameras are going to see a sharp increase between 2009 and 2013, rising from 108.8 million to 177.3 million.

There is a predominance of mobile carriers in the hotspot market, resulting in promotion of Wi-Fi enabled handset devices on their networks. New dual-mode Wi-Fi phones are coming to the market. Growth in applications, such as content download, or even more so VoFi, will drive usage of handheld devices over the coming years. Finally, markets, such as China, are opening for hotspots that have previously restricted Wi-Fi usage on handhelds.

Om Malik's profile of the Wi-Fi hotspot market yields some interesting numbers:

▪ Handhelds accounted for 35% of hotspot connections in 2009, up from 20% in 2008-- a 75% relative increase
▪ Hotspot usage increased 49% in 2009
▪ 1.2 billion hotspot connections were made in 2009
▪ Wi-Fi enabled gadgets-- game players, personal media players, cameras-- will grow by 63% in the four years from 2009-2013

Om also notes that mobile carriers will be huge players in the hotspot market. AT&T's actions over the past year and Verizon's more recent moves show that it makes great business sense for mobile carriers to offload bandwidth-hungry applications from their expensive 3G infrastructure onto cheaper Wi-Fi networks.

However, if you look at the total numbers of public hotspots, I would guess that the combined share of all the carriers is still just a fragment of the whole market. There are so many small and regional players, and more are bringing up new networks every day.

Looks like 2010 is going to be a great year for Wi-Fi!