With sales of iPhones booming and with the launch of new smartphones like Google's Nexus One, 2010 looks like the year when wi-fi usage goes ballistic.
The result is rising demand for wi-fi chipsets.
According to market watcher ABI Research, sales of chipsets for wi-fi, Bluetooth, and GPS connectivity in handsets are likely to grow by grow 16% in 2009, exceeding $1.9bn, and with a CAGR of 11% between 2009 and 2014.
This is helping to kick-start a recovery in the mobile phone semiconductor market.
Suppliers of 802.11 chipsets must be rubbing their hands in anticipation of increasing sales and rising prices.
If you are downloading internet data to your iPhone, it can be more economic to use wi-fi hotspots rather than over the 3G network.
In wi-fi-connected homes broadband changes the download economics all together.
A recent prediction, which I read in the FT, is that the number of wi-fi internet hotspots in the UK could treble over the next few years.
According to Owen Geddes, chief executive of Freerunner, a company which operates 1,200 hotpots, there could be around 10,000 public wi-fi hotspots in the UK right now, a number he expects to increase to around 30,000 over the next 24 months.
According to BT, which has 4,000 public hotspots, traffic doubled in 2009.
It's not just in the UK, hotspot usage is on the up all over the world.
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