Cisco CRS-1 birthday candles blown out

Cisco celebrated the fifth anniversary of its CRS-1 core router last week, extolling the fact that it's shipped 3,200 units in that time period to 300 customers. One thing Cisco is not celebrating is its sliding revenue in core routing.

According to Dell'Oro Group, Cisco's Q1 revenue declined "sharply" compared to Q4 '08 -- a 20% drop -- and Q1 08, down 29%. The plummet was "primarily due to weaker sales of the CRS-1," Dell'Oro said.

Customers wrapped up network projects by mid-2008 and reduced capital expenditures in the second half of the year, reducing or ceasing CRS-1 purchases, Dell'Oro notes. Despite that, Cisco lost less than one point of revenue share in Q1 compared to Q4 08, ending the quarter at 53%.

Indeed, Cisco is bullish on the CRS-1's next five years.

Juniper, meanwhile, lost two points of sequential revenue share in Q1 -- 31% vs. 33% in Q4 08. Weak sales of the T-series routers in North America and EMEA were the primary culprits, according to Dell'Oro.

Juniper did not realize any revenue on the TX Matrix Plus interconnect for the T-series core routers in Q1, according to Dell'Oro.

Overall, revenue for core routers declined 24% from Q1 of 2008, and 19% from Q4, to $577 million. Q1 was the third consecutive quarter of sequential revenue decline in core routers, Dell'Oro notes, due to project completions, reduced spending and the macroeconomic slowdown.

Dell'Oro expects core router revenue in 2009 to be 22% lower than 2008's $3.1 billion.

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