Cisco saw its hold on the Ethernet switching market decline during the first quarter, losing share as rivals Juniper and Arista made gains.
The routing giant, according to IDC, saw Ethernet switching revenues decline 3.5% year over year. Likewise, its market share declined slightly to 55.1% from 55.6% in the fourth quarter of 2016. IDC noted that in the competitive 10GbE segment, Cisco held 52.4% of the market in the first quarter, down from 53.0% in the previous quarter.
Cisco saw its combined service provider and enterprise router revenue decrease 13.3% on an annualized basis, while its market share came in at 43.9% in the first quarter of 2017, up from 42.2% in the fourth quarter of 2016, but down from 48.8% in the first quarter of 2016.
While Cisco saw declines, Arista and Juniper rose during the period.
Arista Networks’ Ethernet switching revenue rose 37.1% year over year, earning a market share of 5.1%, up from 3.9% in the first quarter of 2016. Arista's market share in the 100 Gbps segment stands at 27.8%.
Juniper's Ethernet switching rose 39.2% year over year in the first quarter, bringing its market share to 4.3% versus 3.2% in the first quarter. The vendor also saw a 3.4% year-over-year increase in combined service provider and enterprise router revenues, with market share of 15.6%, compared to 14.5% in the first quarter of 2016.
Worldwide Ethernet switching is on the upswing as market revenue rose 3.3% year over year to $5.66 billion in the first quarter of 2017.
Despite the overall gains, IDC revealed in its latest report that worldwide total enterprise and service provider router market declined 3.7% on a year-over-year basis to $3.35 billion during the same period. IDC noted that the worldwide enterprise and service provider router market contracted 3.7% on a year-over-year basis in the first quarter of 2017 based on a 4.4% decrease in the larger service provider segment and a 1.4% decrease in enterprise routing.
The research firm said the service provider will be a market to watch closely over the coming quarters as software-defined architectures start to take hold across the WAN. In particular, IDC said that there’s a “potential for SD-WAN to disrupt traditional routing architectures and WAN transport services markets especially at the network edge.”
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On a combined basis, the enterprise and service provider router market saw a varied regional performance in the first quarter, with APeJ Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) (APeJ) recording the strongest growth (up 8.8% year over year). Japan, the only other region to record growth, increased 5.2% year over year in the first quarter.
Other regions saw greater declines in the quarter. Western Europe was down 7.1% on an annualized basis, while North America dropped 9.8%. Latin America saw the steepest decline of all, decreasing 23.4% over the first quarter 2016.
"The Ethernet switch market, across the enterprise and Datacenter segments, is characterized by two competing forces: faster speeds and increased standardization," said Rohit Mehra, VP of network infrastructure at IDC, in a release. "Both forces drive port shipments up, but price erosion from standardization and product maturity means that improved price-performance becomes more important across regions.”
Mehra added that the “continued penetration of cloud coupled with the digital transformation imperative will drive market growth throughout 2017."