IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Ethernet Switch and Router Tracker Shows Mixed Results

Meanwhile, the worldwide router market was relatively weak in 1Q13 and decreased 7.9% year over year and 13.0% quarter-over-quarter, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Ethernet Switch and Router Tracker.

From a geographic perspective, the first quarter results found the Ethernet switch market was particularly strong in China where it increased 10.6% year over year, followed by Central and Eastern Europe, which was up 10.3% year over year. As a region, Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) came in with a 6.6% increase, while the United States also performed relatively well in 1Q13 with an increase of 3.5% year over year. Western Europe remained an area of weakness, declining 6.2% year over year. On a positive note for Western Europe, this was an improvement over the double-digit year-over-year declines experienced in 3Q12 and 4Q12.

While 10GbE continues to drive the worldwide Ethernet switch market, it is interesting to note the increasing divergence in the performance of the overall market across the various regions, and in some cases, specific countries, said Rohit Mehra, Vice President, Network Infrastructure at IDC. While GbE is still expected to hold its own for the foreseeable future, we expect 10GbE and 40GbE to drive the wired infrastructure market forward in the coming years, both in the datacenter as well as campus core deployments. But as the market evolves, we should expect there will be pronounced market differences across the various theatres.

10Gb Ethernet switch (Layer 2/3) revenue increased 12.9% year over year to $1.87 billion while 10Gb Ethernet switch port shipments grew 37.6% year over year to 3.9 million ports in 1Q13. 10GbE continues to be the primary driver of the overall Ethernet switch market.

The worldwide Layer 4-7 switching market lost some momentum in 1Q13 and decreased 4.3% year over year. This was the first annual decline in more than three years.

The worldwide enterprise and service provider Router market declined 7.9% year over year and 13.0% sequentially in 1Q13. As with the Ethernet switch market, IDC saw very uneven performance across major geographies and countries this quarter. Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) actually grew 4.2% year over year in 1Q13 while North America and the Middle East and Africa (MEA) regions were down only low single digits on an annual basis. Elsewhere, Japan, Latin America, and Western Europe all declined by more than 20% year over year. Specifically, Japan fell by 24.8%, Latin America by 22.5%, and Western Europe by 20.5% year over year, each a significant market move by any standard.

From a vendor perspective, Cisco's Ethernet switch (Layer 2/3) market share in 1Q13 came in at 62.7% reflecting a year-over-year decrease from 64.1% in 1Q12, but a solid increase from 61.4% Cisco held in the previous quarter. Cisco's market share in the fast growing 10GbE market segment was 66.7% in 1Q13.

While enterprise mobility is no doubt an area of focus for IT and network managers, the underlying wired infrastructure is also continuing to get mindshare, both in the enterprise campus as well as the datacenter, especially as IT looks to improving the application experience for enterprise users, said Petr Jirovský, Senior Research Analyst in IDC's Networking Trackers Group. That said, the need to support a growing and diverse set of wired and wireless devices at the network edge will continue to keep the enterprise networking market relevant over the longer term.

The IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Ethernet Switch and Router Tracker provides total market size and vendor shares for the Ethernet switch and router technologies in an easy-to-use Excel pivot table format. The geographic coverage for both the Ethernet switch market and the router market includes eight major regions (USA, Canada, Latin America, Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan), Japan, Western Europe, Central and Eastern Europe, and Middle East and Africa) and 58 countries. The Ethernet switch market is further segmented by speed (100Mb, 1000Mb, 10Gb, 40Gb), form factor (fixed managed, fixed unmanaged, modular), and layer (L2, L3, L4-7). Measurement for the Ethernet switch market is provided in factory revenue, customer revenue, and port shipments. The router market is further split by product class (high-end, mid-range, low-end, SOHO) and deployment (service provider, enterprise) and the measurements are in factory revenue, customer revenue, and unit shipments.