The worldwide Ethernet switch market experienced a
year-over-year decline of 1.6 percent in the second quarter of 2011 (2Q11),
while the worldwide Router market continued with its trajectory of continued
growth with a 14.5 percent year over year increase, according to the
International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Enterprise Networks
Tracker.

The preliminary results show the ethernet switch market
moderating after an exceptional recovery in the previous year, while the router
market continued to grow especially in North America.

“There were no major surprises in the second quarter
of 2011 in the Ethernet switch market as a follow on to the significant decline
we saw in the first quarter and after a strong 2010,” said Rohit Mehra,
director, Enterprise Communications Infrastructure at IDC.

IDC
expected growth to moderate going into 2011, and have seen so far in the
ethernet switch market is slightly weaker than expected performance even with
the 7.1 percent sequential growth in the second quarter.

While average per port prices have been under pressure,
they seem to stabilizing, and barring a significant macroeconomic downturn, IDC
expects low to moderate growth in the remainder of 2011.  

10GbE switch revenue increased 22.6 percent year over
year due to continued adoption in datacenters and campus core deployments.
10GbE port shipments grew to 1.43 million ports in the quarter, although per
port prices declined by more than 10 percent again, even after the previous
quarter’s decline.

The worldwide router market came out stronger than
expected in 2Q11 with 14.5 percent year-over-year growth, and the sequential
7.6 percent growth over the first quarter was equally impressive.

Most of this growth came from North America, specifically
the U.S. where the market increased nearly 42 percent year over year, while
EMEA and Latin America declined. The service provider segment, which accounted
for 76.5 percent of the market in 2Q11, grew 9.0 percent quarter-over-quarters,
while the enterprise segment grew a moderate 3.1 percent over the previous
quarter.

From a vendor perspective, Cisco’s Ethernet switch (Layer
2/3) market share in 2Q11 came in at 63.4 percent reflecting a slight decline,
down from 64.1 percent in 1Q11. Cisco’s market share is now at levels seen in
2009 when it averaged 64.4 percent. On a relative basis, Cisco continues to be
strong in the 10GbE segment with a 73.2 percent market share in 2Q11.

“In the broader Ethernet switching market, Gigabit
Ethernet (GbE) decreased 5.5 percent year-over-year in spite of a 14.2 percent
increase in port shipments,” said Petr Jirovský, senior research analyst
in IDC’s Enterprise Communications Infrastructure Group.

Gigabit Ethernet now commands a 60.4 percent share of the
overall Layer 2/3 switching market, while Fast Ethernet continues its slow
decline with a 11.11 percent share.

By Telecomlead.com Team
[email protected]