Cisco Systems has retained its dominant position in the India switch and router market despite challenges from HPE in switch market and Nokia in server market in Q3 2017, according to IDC.

Cisco achieved several router contracts from Indian telecom operators – especially in 4G space. Operators such as Reliance Jio, Vodafone, Idea Cellular and Bharti Airtel have expanded their 4G presence in India. At the same time, Reliance Jio has invested in VoLTE and Airtel is expanding its VoLTE presence gradually.

IDC said the Indian Ethernet Switch market achieved 18.4 percent growth, while India Router market grew 30.6 percent in the third quarter of 2017.

IDC said India networking market including Ethernet switch, routers and WLAN achieved 15.8 percent growth in Q3 2017 due to increased spending from both enterprise and service providers segments.

The size of the Indian Ethernet Switch market was $119 million in vendor revenue — driven by telecommunications, banking, professional services and government.
Cisco Systems dominated the Switch market due to spending from telecommunications and banking verticals, followed by HPE and D-Link. Vendors such as Arista and Nokia achieved triple-digit growth in Q3 2017.

The size of the Indian Router market was $89.4 million – driven by telecommunications, professional services and government.

IDC said majority of the router growth came from high-end router segment due to increased spending from mobile service providers on 4G and VoLTE. Government initiatives around BharatNet and state data center refresh projects also contributed to further investments in India.
Cisco is the leader in the Indian router market due to demand from telecom players in India. Nokia has emerged as the second-best vendor due to couple of multimillion dollars deals in telecommunication vertical.

India WLAN market revenue dipped 8.9 percent to $46.9 million primarily due to drop in spending by consumer and service providers segment. The revenue of Enterprise WLAN vendors grew 12.9 percent.

Smart city initiatives and Wi-Fi hotspots in central universities are big ticket investments seen in the market. In terms of technology cloud-based controller technologies is becoming mainstream with multiple vendors offering solutions in this space

D-Link regained number one position from Cisco in the overall WLAN market. D-Link has 24.1 percent market share in Q3 2017. Cisco, HPE and Ruckus (renamed as Brocade) dominate the enterprise WLAN market in India. D-Link, TP-Link and Netgear are the top three vendors in the consumer WLAN market segment in India.

Baburajan K