The first applications to adopt Wi-Fi Direct include mobile PCs, mobile phones, and digital televisions (DTVs). These devices share a trait: they are the respective centers of the PC, CE, and mobile device clusters, and they ship in the hundreds of millions of devices annually. Wireless display of images and video is a major aim of Wi-Fi Direct, so the main display in most homes will be a key target and Wi-Fi Direct: It’s All About the Software, forecasts that by the year 2015 nearly 80 million DTVs will be Wi-Fi Direct-enabled.

“One significant question surrounding to Wi-Fi Direct is will it ultimately help to increase the penetration of Wi-Fi? The answer is, marginally if at all,” says research director Brian O’Rourke.

“WiFi is already doing very well, with increasing penetration rates throughout PCs, PC peripherals, CE devices, and mobile phones. As a peer-to-peer networking technology, WiFi Direct may be the most help in CE, where WiFi’s impact has been more modest than in the PC world. It is in the CE market, particularly portable CE devices, where WiFi Direct may have the most added value.”

Other details from the report include:

Mobile PCs will adopt WiFi Direct more quickly than any other application.
Every PC, CE device and mobile phone that ships in 2014 with WiFi silicon will be WiFi Direct-enabled.
WiFi Direct-enabled device shipments will reach 173 million by 2011.

Recent In-Stat research, WiFi Direct: It’s All About the Software includes annual penetration forecasts through 2015 for WiFi Direct in 21 separate applications in four product segments:

PCs including: mobile PCs and desktop PCs.
PC Peripherals including: printers & multifunction peripherals, keyboards and mice, USB WiFi adapters, and speakers & audio adapters.
Consumer electronics including: digital televisions, digital still cameras, digital camcorders, digital set top boxes (STBs, streaming media players, portable media players, video game consoles, handheld game consoles, DVD and Blu-ray players and recorders, digital photo frames, and e-readers.
Communications including: mobile phones.
Company profiles including: Atheros, Broadcom, ConnectSoft, CSR, Intel, LG, Marvell Semiconductor, Ozmo Devices, Qualcomm, Ralink, Realtek Semiconductor, and WiFi Alliance.