Cisco leads service provider router, switch market in Q2, ahead of Huawei

Cisco is leading the service provider routers and switches market in the second quarter of 2013, said Infonetics Research. Cisco is ahead of Huawei, the Chinese telecom equipment vendor.

The other top telecom vendors in the service provider routers and switches market include Huawei, Alcatel-Lucent, Juniper Networks and ZTE.

Infonetics Research says the service provider routers and switches market rose 27 percent sequentially to $4 billion. The substantial growth shows that telecom service providers are ready to spend after holding back in the previous quarter.

In the overall carrier router and switch market, Huawei Technologies gained 4 market share points in Q2 2013, rising back into the #2 spot behind leader Cisco.

In Asia Pacific, carrier router and switch revenue increased 45 percent from the previous quarter thanks in large part to Huawei’s and ZTE’s stellar performance.

“The 2nd quarter is usually up for carrier routers and switches, but this one is exceptional given the sluggishness of the past few years. Every major geographical region except Japan notched double-digit sequential growth and, more important, gained from the year-ago quarter,” said Michael Howard, principal analyst for carrier networks and co-founder of Infonetics Research.

Service provider router and switch vendor chart Q2
IP edge (edge routers and carrier Ethernet switches) revenue grew 30 percent sequentially in Q2 2013, attributable in part to an uptick in the move to 100GE on routers and 100G in optical transport.

Infonetics says core routers grew the slowest quarter-over-quarter.

Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Huawei and Juniper together account for about 90 percent of total router (edge and core) revenue in Q2 2013.

Over the past 2 years, Infonetics said, Huawei gained the most edge and core router market share points of any vendor, up 5.6 points.

Baburajan K
[email protected]