Worldwide security appliances market grew 3.4% year on year to $2bn during the first quarter of 2013, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC).
During the first quarter, the security appliance shipments decreased by 6.8% to 472,306 units.
According to the report, the decrease in shipments was driven by the Cisco’s shift to new appliances with a higher price point that led the revenue to remain more constant in spite of decreasing units.
IDC Security Products research manager, John Grady, said that the government sector seemed to impact the results somewhat in the US.
"However, all organisations continue to prioritise security within their overall IT budget. With advanced, targeted threats a growing concern, IDC expects continued high single-digit growth in the overall security appliance segment over the course of 2013," Grady said.
Regionally, Canada experienced the highest growth of 16.4% in the quarter followed by Japan with 8.6% rise while Asia/Pacific excluding Japan registered 7.1% increase that accounted to over 16% of worldwide factory revenue.
For the quarter, Western Europe recorded 3.9% rise in the revenue compared to the first quarter of 2012, while the US registered a 0.2% decline in factory revenue and a unit drop of 10.2%.
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The overall security appliance market was led by Cisco with a 16.6% share in factory revenue, followed by Check Point with a 12.5% market share, while Fortinet recorded highest increase in revenue of 16.6% for the period.
IDC Worldwide Trackers Group senior research analyst, Ebenezer Obeng-Nyarkoh, said: "While businesses continue to explore the opportunities for migrating to a private cloud network as a new technology paradigm, unified security prospects will continue to expand rapidly into other small and medium-size businesses where demand is greater than ever."
Based on the segment, the Unified Threat Management (UTM) led the market with 36.4% in the first quarter resulting in 37.1% market share, while the Firewall/VPN market decreased by 21.2% and the Content Security segment grew by 6.8% compared to the prior year.
