IDC: Ethernet switch market grows 2%

According to IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Ethernet Switch Tracker and Worldwide Quarterly Router Tracker reports, the global Ethernet switch market increased 2% to $6.29 billion in revenue in the third quarter. Meanwhile, router revenue increased 2.6% to $3.56 billion as enterprises and service providers strengthened their infrastructure offerings.

[[182386]]

IDF noted that Cisco's Ethernet market share continued to erode, and it now has only 57% market share, down 6.5% from Q3 2015. Hewlett Packard Enterprise's switch sales also declined, but Juniper Networks and Arista Networks' Ethernet switch sales both increased, with Arista's full-year growth reaching 31.5%. Huawei's Ethernet switch sales also doubled during the same period; the Chinese vendor now has 7.2% of the market.

"Recent macroeconomic developments and the increasing maturity of IT architectures have led to mixed reactions among IT decision makers in their Ethernet switch purchases in the third quarter of 2016," said Steve Ehrlich, vice president of IDC's Network Infrastructure, in a statement. "The 40GbE and 100GbE segments for data center deployments have grown steadily in the market, while the enterprise campus switch market has contracted."

40GbE switch sales increased significantly

IDC pointed out that 10GbE switch sales fell 1.3% from the same period last year to only $2.22 billion, while 40GbE switch revenue soared 20% to $756.4 million.

In addition to these two Ethernet switch market standards, there is now a 100GbE switch market, which saw sales triple in the third quarter of this year compared to the same period last year.

IDC noted that 1GbE switch revenues fell 4.3% for the year. IDC noted that enterprise routers had an 8.2% growth rate as the bright spot in router sales, noting that this market is nearly saturated as more companies begin to evaluate new SD-WAN technologies.

"Software-defined network architecture and network transport in the digital economy are shaking up the share of core network infrastructure," said Steve Schmidt, research manager of IDC's Worldwide Network Trackers, in a statement.