Global market for Ethernet switches declined 4.4% during the third quarter of 2012 to $5.36bn while the router market declined 0.2% over the corresponding quarter in 2012, according to IDC Worldwide Quarterly Ethernet Switch and Router Tracker.
The 3Q12 results reveal that the Ethernet switch market reported growth in regions including Latin America, Japan, Central & Eastern Europe, and Middle East & Africa (MEA), while declined3.5%, 6.4% and 10% in Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan), the US and Western Europe respectively.
IDC Network Infrastructure vice president Rohit Mehra said that the unexpected decline in the Ethernet switch market was mainly due to the slower growth in the 10GbE core segment of the market that could not completely offset the decline in the networkedge/access segment.
"10GbE along with the emerging 40GbE Ethernet switch segments are the ones to watch as growth in virtualized applications and converged infrastructure will continue to drive the need for advanced networks in datacenter buildouts," Mehra said.
The revenue generated from 10GbE switch (Layer 2/3) rose 10.7% during the quarter, while the shipments of 10GbE ports increased 61.4% to about 3.5 million ports when compared to the corresponding quarter in 2011.
During the period, the global market for Layer 4-7 switches reported 6.9% rise year over year to $414.9m over the same period in last year.
The global router market reported strong results regionally by reporting 21.5% rise in Middle East & Africa in addition to high single digit rises experienced in Asia/Pacific and the US.
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During the quarter, router market in Central & Eastern Europe declined 8.7% year over year, while Latin America reported 12.2% decline along with 20.8% drop reported by Western Europe when compared to the same quarter in 2011.
The market for Cisco’s Ethernet switch (Layer 2/3) declined to 62.2% from 65.6% in 3Q11, while the firm’s market share in 10GbE segment stood at 68.5%during the period.
