The global Ethernet switch market reported a growth of 7.4% to $5.1bn in the first quarter of 2012, the highest since the fourth quarter of 2010, according to research firm IDC.
The report also revealed a strong Ethernet switch market growth in Latin America at 24.6% and an improved growth in Asia/Pacific and North America, by 9.2% and 7.1%, respectively.
Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) saw relatively soft growth, reporting a rise by a mere 4.2% in Q1 2012.
IDC Enterprise Communications Infrastructure director Rohit Mehra said the positive market performance in the first quarter of 2012 speaks well to the network infrastructure needs of enterprise IT as it embraces cloud technologies.
"While Gigabit Ethernet is alive and well at the network edge supporting a myriad of applications, it is 10GbE along with the emerging 40GbE that will continue to drive incremental growth in datacenter and campus core deployments," he added.
IDC noted 10GbE switch (Layer 2/3) market revenue jumped 20.6% with sales of 10GbE switches increasing to a record 2.8 million ports in the quarter.
The Layer 4-7 switching market revenues reported a 21.1% growth to $388.7m, although it stayed relatively flat over the previously strong seasonal quarter.
The worldwide router market was up by 2.8% year in the first quarter, an improvement from 4Q 2011 when the overall router market was down 3.9%.
IDC stated the strong 14.7% growth in North America, 10.8% increase in Latin America, and 5.1% growth in Asia/Pacific were offset by a decline of 14.7% in EMEA in 1Q 2012.
Cisco System’s Ethernet switch (Layer 2/3) market share in Q1 2012 was 65.1%, an improvement from 63% in Q1 2011, increasing the company’s market share in the booming 10 Gigabit Ethernet switch market segment at 69.4%.
