A survey by San Jose-based analyst Dataquest Inc suggests that the worldwide intelligent hub market more than doubled in 1993 to 20m port shipments. According to Dataquest, the non-modular managed Ethernet hub market (including entry-level stackable hubs for networks) trebled to 6.1m ports in 1993, compared with 1.9m ports in 1992. This is attributed to a shift in demand from large companies to small and medium-sized organisations. These companies don’t need anything too complex, just the essentials to hook everyone together and perhaps connect to a remote facility, says a Dataquest spokesman. In 1992, the Token Ring market was larger than non-modular managed Ethernet shipments, at 2m ports, but there were 2.3m more non-modular managed Ethernet shipments than Token Ring shipments, which accounted for only 3.8m ports in 1993, says Dataquest. The modular market was 8.6m ports in 1993, up from 5.0m ports the year before. The FDDI and Ethernet Switching markets are still embryonic, shipping 92,000 and 86,000 ports respectively last year. Despite the change in the dynamics of the market, Dataquest finds that the top four hub vendors in 1993 did not show much change from the previous year. SynOptics Communications Inc remained the market leader with a market share of 23%, or 4.5m ports, compared with 22% in 1992; Cabletron Systems Inc stayed in second position with 19% of the market, or 3.8m ports, up from 18% in 1992; Hewlett-Packard Co took the bronze, with an 8% market share, or 1.6m ports, unchanged from 1992; 3Com Corp commanded 7% of the market, or 1.4m ports, up a percentage point from 1992; while others accounted for 43%, or 8.5m ports, up from 46%.
