In spite of a down quarter to start the year, Infonetics Research expects the carrier router and switch market to grow at an 8.8% compound annual growth rate through 2017, according to its latest market report and forecast, which tracks IP edge and core routers and Carrier Ethernet switches (CES).
"The first quarter is normally down for routers and Carrier Ethernet switches, so it's better to look at the longer-term trends," explained Michael Howard, principal analyst for carrier networks and co-founder of Infonetics Research. "The main growth drivers – the transition from TDM to packet and rising video traffic – are still in effect, the U.S. economy is slowly improving, and a number of large operators in the Euro zone intend to spend."
Pushed lower by weakness in Europe, global service provider router and switch revenue declined 17% in 1Q13 from 4Q12, and is down 6% from the year-ago quarter (1Q12), the market research firm says.
North America was the only geographic region to buck the usually seasonal Q1 blues, posting a 7% sequential gain. EMEA (Europe, the Middle East, and Africa), Asia Pacific, and CALA (Caribbean and Latin America) all declined by double digits in 1Q13.
Cisco maintains its strong hold on the number one spot in the overall carrier router and switch market with a 39% revenue share in 1Q13. Meanwhile, the fight for the next three positions remains tight, with less than one percentage point separating Alcatel-Lucent, Huawei, and Juniper. Alcatel-Lucent edged ahead of Huawei for second place in 1Q13.
Private router company Compass-EOS gets an honorary mention because it recently announced NTT as a customer for its new core router that provides terabit-per-second connectivity to facilitate software-defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV).
Infonetics' quarterly router and switch report provides worldwide, regional, China, and Japan market share, market size, forecasts, and trends for IP edge and core routers, Carrier Ethernet switches, and the IP edge market by application.
For more information on Carrier Ethernet equipment and suppliers, visit the Lightwave Buyer’s Guide.