Worldwide demand for service provider routers decelerated
sharply in the third quarter of 2011 following six consecutive quarters of
year-over-year expansion at double-digit rates. 

 

Projected to approach $10 billion for the full year 2011,
the service provider routers grew 3 percent in the third quarter. 

 

The marginal growth is because of shifts in investment
priorities and weak macroeconomic conditions, especially in North America and
Europe, as key contributors to the market slowdown.

 

The top five service provider router vendors for Q3 2011,
in ranking order were Cisco, Juniper, Alcatel-Lucent, Huawei, and Ericsson.

 

“We have seen a trend of Service Providers shifting
investments from wireline to wireless infrastructure, which has led to reduced
demand for routers,” said Shin Umeda, vice president at Dell’Oro Group.

 

Use of Service Provider Routers in wireless networks has
increased significantly over the past two years, but wireline networks still
account for more than 80 percent of deployments.

 

In August 2011, Dell’Oro Group said
that the worldwide service provider router market grew by 26 percent in the
second quarter of 2011 due to strong demand from the North American and Asia
Pacific regions. Equipment vendor Alcatel-Lucent
is leading the mobile backhaul, and Huawei is doing very well in its home China
market, Cisco and Juniper to pursue these opportunities as well. Mobile
backhaul projects in the United States and fiber optic broadband initiatives in
China as the underlying drivers of the market growth.

 

By Telecomlead.com Team
[email protected]