Worldwide factory revenue for security appliances grew 9.7% year over year to $1.9bn in the first quarter of 2012 while shipments increased 12.9% to 511,220 units, according to newly released data from International Data Corporation (IDC).
IDC Worldwide Quarterly Security Appliance Tracker revealed that globally, all regions with the exception of Asia/Pacific excluding Japan reported double-digit growth in unit shipments.
Central & Eastern Europe region recorded 39.3% year-over-year increase, reporting fastest growth in terms of shipments, marking the seventh consecutive quarter with double-digit unit growth.
US posted the biggest gains in factory revenue by 16.2%, led by a surge in high-end firewall and IPS shipments in the quarter.
IDC Worldwide Trackers Group senior research analyst Ebenezer Obeng-Nyarkoh said the increasingly complex nature of IT security along with the growing threat landscape has the potential to affect operations and cause significant disruptions and the loss of sensitive data.
"Security products are expanding rapidly into other small, fast-growing geographies where demand is greater than ever," Obeng-Nyarkoh said.
The top 5 global vendors combined shares increased to 50.7% during first quarter of 2012, where Cisco continues to lead the market with 18.4% share followed by Check Point with 12.7% share with 25.9% revenue increase.
Juniper was the only top 5 vendor that saw share loss by 0.7 points year over year and saw a modest 0.8% year-over-year increase in revenue.
McAfee and Fortinet gained roughly half a percent of market share compared to the prior year’s period, as both saw strong double-digit growth.
With respect to the functional market, the firewall/VPN segment saw the largest revenue growth at 23.3% and accounted for 28.3% of the overall market, largely due to Cisco’s growth and a strong quarter for Juniper’s high end SRX, despite weakness elsewhere in the portfolio.
The Unified Threat Management (UTM) market accounted for 28.5% of security appliance revenues thanks to 12.2% growth.
IDC Security Products senior research analyst John Grady said increasingly, customers are requiring products that protect against a variety of threats, lower the total cost of ownership, and offer more streamlined management.
"The UTM market, which includes most application-aware, next-generation firewalls fulfills these requirements. As such, IDC expects to see continued strong growth in this market segment," John added.
