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Say you have a 3x3 AP and three clients.
Without MU-MIMO, one client can receive three spatial streams per time slot.
With MU-MIMO, three clients can each receive one spatial stream per time slot.
However, the total link capacity per client is still the same over time. So what's the benefit of MU-MIMO?
This might answer you question.
When MU-MIMO becomes available, the antennas should be more relevant. While a single client with one or two antennas would not be able to fully utilize eight spatial streams offered by an 8x8:8 11ac AP, it’s possible for several Wi-Fi clients to share a larger pool of streams and antennas, so that overall aggregate throughput improves for the client population. Early demonstrations of a single-stream 11ac radio, mounted in smartphone prototypes, have delivered approximately 220Mbps in a fairly challenging environment. The faster the handset can transmit its loads, the better its battery life, because faster devices spend less time transmitting and more time “sleeping.”
