Research firm In-Stat is saying that shipments of consumer electronics devices with Wi-Fi capabilities will reach almost 1 billion per year by the year 2012.

The numbers are already staggering - the firm says 294 million consumer electronics devices with Wi-Fi shipped in 2007. In-Stat is predicting a compound annual growth rate in the market through 2012 of 26%.

Wireless LAN technology, or Wi-Fi, has established itself as a wireless standard for corporate networks and metropolitan networks. But its real strength has come from widespread use as a way to access a broadband line, such as that provided by a cable modem.

With so many people using Wi-Fi for that purpose, that has opened the door to widespread use of Wi-Fi in consumer electronics. In-Stat calls Wi-Fi the "Swiss Army Knife Technology," and that's a pretty good characterization.

Like Ethernet before it, Wi-Fi is finding its way into every place you could possibly think of to do networking, and even into places you wouldn't normally expect to do networking. It takes the application flexibility of Ethernet and adds the location flexibility of wireless technology, and that's a potent combination.

Digital TVs will constitute one of the largest categories of stationary devices that have Wi-Fi. While not many TVs have this capability today, they will in years to come.

Cell phones that also support Wi-Fi will also grow in numbers. In fact, In-Stat predicts that by 2011, combination cellular/Wi-Fi handsets will surpass mobile PCs as the largest category of Wi-Fi devices.

The widespread use of Wi-Fi is bound to affect all aspects of network architecture, whether in a corporate network or in a home network.

Jeff Caruso is site editor at Network World.