Even though the ink is barely dry on the IEEE’s 802.11ax Wi-Fi 6 standard, MediaTek and Qualcomm have announced radio chips supporting Wi-Fi 7.  These chips will reach the market at the end of 2022 and in early 2023 in flagship smartphones well ahead of the expected final approval of the standard in 2024.

Wi-Fi 7 will double the speed and capacity of Wi-Fi compared to Wi-Fi 6, reaching a peak, physical layer data rate of an astounding 46 gigabits per second.
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Why does this matter?  Proponents say that Wi-Fi will support 90 frame per second, 8k, HDR, and stereoscopic video, increasing realism and all but eliminating motion sickness-inducing photon-to-motion latency for augmented reality and virtual reality wireless streaming.

If the so-called metaverse is to succeed, it will do so on the back of Wi-Fi 7 for the last couple of meters of connection between the internet and the user display, especially when using untethered AR/VR goggles or glasses. 

For more information on Wi-Fi 7 and what it means for applications and radio component suppliers, subscribers can read a recent Strategy Analytics report here.