The Ethernet switch market revenue rose 3 percent to $5.97 billion in the second quarter of 2016, said IDC.
Cisco Systems, the market leader, posted declines in both market share and revenue in Q2 2016.
Enterprise and service provider (SP) router market revenue fell 2 percent to $3.67 billion.
The Ethernet switch market grew 3 percent, while the router market fell 2 percent in Q2 2016, says IDC.
In Latin America, Ethernet switch market revenue increased 8.5 percent – supported by Chile (+31.9 percent) and Brazil (+8.4 percent).
In Western Europe, Ethernet switch market revenue rose 4 percent with Ireland clocking 37.5 percent.
In Asia Pacific (excluding Japan)(APeJ) Ethernet switch market revenue increased 3.8 percent – with support from the Philippines (+14.7 percent) and China (+12.9 percent).
North America’s Ethernet switch market revenue increased 3.5 percent.
“Despite no region seeing a voluminous shift in either direction, digital transformation projects and continuous growth of public / private cloud deployments helped lead the Ethernet switch market to steady year-over-year growth,” said Rohit Mehra, vice president, Network Infrastructure at IDC.
10Gb Ethernet switch (Layer 2/3) increased 3.2 percent to $2.16 billion, while 10Gb Ethernet switch port shipments grew 24.7 percent to over 9 million ports shipped.
40Gb Ethernet revenue surged 33.2 percent to $750.3 million, while shipments reached 1.9 million ports (+97.5 percent).
IDC said 10Gb and 40Gb Ethernet have been the primary drivers of the Ethernet switch market so far in 2016 as 25/100 Gb Ethernet start to emerge and will see volumes pick up in H2 2016.
1Gb Ethernet switch revenue – key to the enterprise campus networking segment – decreased 4.5 percent, despite a 13.6 percent increase in port shipments.
The enterprise and service provider router market fell 2 percent with a 3.6 percent decrease in the larger service provider segment and 3.4 percent increase in enterprise routing.
IDC says that the enterprise routing will be a market to watch closely over the coming quarters as software-defined architectures start to take hold across the WAN, enabling enterprise network managers and service providers alike to benefit from these emerging capabilities.
Top players in Ethernet switching market
Cisco’s Ethernet switching market revenue fell 2.6 percent, while market share dipped to 56.8 percent from 59 percent.
Cisco held 53 percent of the 10GbE market against 55.7 percent in the previous quarter. Cisco saw its combined service provider and enterprise router revenue decrease 8.5 percent, while its market share fell to 44.8 percent in Q2 2016 from 48.8 percent in Q1 2016.
HPE posted 34.8 percent decline in the Ethernet switching market, largely as a result of this quarter’s split of the H3C business from HPE. HPE held 6 percent market share.
Huawei’s Ethernet switch revenue grew 44 percent, while its enterprise and SP router revenue increased 15.3 percent. Huawei has 18.9 percent of the total router market, said IDC.
Arista grew 35.4 percent and holds 3.9 percent of the market against 3 percent. IDC said Arista’s share is significantly higher in the datacenter switch market though as evidenced by its 19.9 percent share in the 40Gb/100Gb market.
Juniper’s Ethernet switching revenue fell 4.3 percent. Juniper Networks saw a 1.5 percent decrease in combined service provider and enterprise router revenues, with market share of 15.7 percent.
