The global market for switching and routing equipment stalled at the end of the year, according to IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Ethernet Switch Tracker and Worldwide Quarterly Router Tracker.
IDC reported that the global Ethernet switch market posted $7.6 billion in fourth quarter 2019 revenue, a 2.1% year-over-year decline. The switch market decline is not as bad as what’s going on in the router market. IDC reported that the worldwide enterprise and service provider (SP) router market took in $4.2 billion in revenue for 4Q19, a 7.7% decline.
100GbE Growing
While the overall market is down, some segments of the switching market remain strong. In particular, 100 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) switch revenue was up by 24.7% on shipments of 5.8 million ports, for $1.4 billion in revenue in 4Q19. 25GbE is also growing, with port shipments up by 57.1%.
10GbE, which has long been the cornerstone of data center and enterprise networks, is going the other way, with a revenue decline of 13.0% though the number of ports shipped grew by 7%.
“While the rise and spread of the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, did not impact these 4Q19 results, it will not ease these pressures in the early part of 2020 where we expect this softness to continue,” stated Rohit Mehra, vice president for Network Infrastructure at IDC. “Despite these headwinds, enterprises are still prioritizing investments in digital platforms in order to transform their businesses and keep pace with competitors, which will ultimately continue to buoy spending in the networking market over the long term.”
Vendor Rankings
Cisco continues to dominate the switch market with a 50.9% market share, though it reported declining 4Q19 switch revenue, down by 6.4%.
Huawei holds a 9.6% share of the switch market on revenue growth of 8.9%, while Arista Network holds a 7.0% market share even after its 4Q19 revenue declined by 11.1%.
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at EnterpriseNetworkingPlanet and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.