Cisco Q1 slump drops Ethernet switch market

As an addendum to what we posted yesterday on SDN slowing Ethernet switch sales, Infonetics Research also found that the Ethernet switch market declined 15% in the first quarter, to under $5 billion. Dell’Oro Group found the market slumped to just over $5 billion on a 16% decline from Q4, 2013.

Infonetics blames the slump on weak Cisco results: the market leader’s revenue declined by 7% from a year ago and could not be offset by the solid performance of its competitors. Arista was up over 90%, Juniper was up 52% and HP produced “steady” results, according to the firm.

Cisco’s undergoing a product transition to the new Nexus 9000 line from the Nexus 7000 and Catalyst 6500 series switches. The Nexus 9000 is Cisco’s underpinning for its Application Centric Infrastructure response to SDNs.

Commodity white box switching favored by cloud providers, and often associated with SDNs, is gaining momentum; and China, which is on an anti-Cisco kick right now, drove the market in Q1.

Infonetics also found that "SDN hesitation" is slowing service provider spending on routers and switches.

High-speed Ethernet port shipments were strong in Q1, Infonetics found: 10G ports are up 37% from a year ago, 40G tripled and 100G ports are up more than thirty-fold, the firm found.