The global Ethernet switch market (Layer 2/3) rose 2.1% year on year during the first quarter of 2013 to $5.28bn, while compared to fourth quarter the market dropped by 7.6%, according to a new report from IDC.
During the quarter, the global router market declined 7.9% year over year and 13.0% quarter-over-quarter, IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Ethernet Switch and Router Tracker revealed.
China witnessed highest demand for Ethernet switches, reporting 10.6% rise year over year, followed by Central and Eastern Europe, with 10.3% rise, while the market in Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) and the US rose 6.6% and 3.5% respectively.
Western Europe reported a 6.2% drop in Ethernet switch demand year over year, while improved compared to the double-digit year-over-year drops experienced in 3Q12 and 4Q12.
IDC Network Infrastructure VP, Rohit Mehra, said that 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.
"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 datacentre as well as campus core deployments," Mehra said.
"But as the market evolves, we should expect there will be pronounced market differences across the various theatres."
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The revenue generated by 10GB Ethernet switch increased 12.9% to $1.87bn while 10GB Ethernet switch port shipments rose 37.6% to 3.9 million units during the quarter.
However, the global Layer 4-7 switching market dropped 4.3% during Q1, representing its first annual decline in more than three years.
The global Router market declined by 7.9% during the quarter with Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) reporting 4.2% growth while North America and the Middle East and Africa (MEA) regions dropped by low single digits on an annual basis.
Further, Japan, Latin America, and Western Europe witnessed 20% drop in Router market, reporting drops of 24.8%, 22.5% and 20.5% respectively.
IDC Networking Trackers Group senior research analyst, Petr Jirovský, said 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 datacentre, especially as IT looks to improving the application experience for enterprise users.
"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," Jirovský said.
Cisco captured 62.7% of the Ethernet switch (Layer 2/3) market in 1Q13, a drop from 64.1% in 1Q12, while an increase from 61.4% during the 4Q12 and the company also captured 66.7% share in the 10GbE market segment.
