2021 Wi-Fi Trends: Phones Dominate, But These Popular Devices See Huge Growth

pcmag.com:

We love to talk about Starlink, but that nascent satellite broadband service has miles to go before it becomes a household name like Comcast, which saw close to a billion devices connect to its Xfinity broadand Wi-Fi network in 2021, according to a new report.

Comcast had 31 million Xfinity customers as of summer 2021, or 40% of the broadband internet subscriptions in the country, according to Statista. Almost all those people have Wi-Fi at home, and many use Comcast-provided equipment. The company keeps tabs on what kind of products attach to that equipment and includes the info in its Wi-Fi trends report.

The first impressive stat is the sheer number of devices that connected to Wi-Fi in Xfinity households last year, as shown above. It was close to a billion, which is 12 times the number of devices Comcast counted in 2018.

The breakdown of gadget types shows smartphones in the lead—they account for one-third of all devices, at 347 million. That's a 23x increase, but it pales in comparison to the 93x increase for smart exercise equipment. The number jumped to 814,000 in 2021 as people working remotely during COVID-19 connected new Peloton bikes, Mirror fitness devices, and more.

Streaming media devices jumped 14x since 2018 to 119 million, and gaming consoles were up 15x from 2018 to 36.7 million.

Forty-five percent of respondents said Wi-Fi connectivity is more important than transportation, and 59% reported spending money in the last year to improve their in-home Wi-Fi.

Comcast also reports that its parental controls were used by over 1 million customers, who tapped into the feature to schedule offline time for children—they did 100 million full pauses/unpauses on select Wi-Fi devices to cut off kids' internet access