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Cisco Systems continues to demonstrate its dominance in the networking space, with an Infonetics Research report saying the company was the top player in the switch and router market.
Cisco saw sharp gains in revenues in the space, according to Infonetics analyst Michael Howard.
“Cisco is on a roll, bumping up their service provider IP core and edge router revenue by 6 [percent] in the first quarter of 2010 compared to the previous quarter, and up 33 [percent] compared to the first quarter of 2009,” Howard said in a statement May 26.
Some smaller vendors, including Tellabs and NEC, also posted gains in the IP router segment, while a number of other players-in particular, Alacatel-Lucent, Ericsson and Huawei-saw revenues fall.
“Both Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson noted supply problems with components and parts,” Howard said.
Overall, worldwide revenue from service provider IP edge routers, IP core routers, carrier Ethernet switches and multiservice ATM switches fell 5 percent from the previous quarter, to $2.95 billion, according to Infonetics. The firm noted that the first quarter is usually a down one for the market.
However, revenue in the space was up 14 percent over the first quarter in 2009.
Revenues in the North American carrier router and switch market grew in the first quarter, up 1.5 percent after gaining 18 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009.
Compared to this time last year, the service provider switch and router market in North America is up 29 percent.
Carrier Ethernet switch revenue was up 8 percent from the previous quarter and 22 percent over the same period last year.
Infonetics wasn’t the only market research firm to note Cisco’s growth in the networking space. IDC analysts on May 25 said Cisco was the key beneficiary of the strong growth in the Ethernet switch and router space in the first quarter that was fueled in large part by the rising demand for virtualization, cloud computing, and voice and video over IP.
Cisco’s market share in Ethernet switches jumped to 68.5 percent-over the 64.5 percent in the first quarter of 2009-and its share of the service provider Ethernet router space grew from 45.6 percent in the first quarter last year to 52.9 percent in the first three months this year.
Revenues for the fast-growing 10 Gigabit Ethernet switch market topped $1 billion for the first time, hitting $1.15 billion for the quarter.
Revenues in the Ethernet router market jumped 15.1 percent, according to IDC.