* Market for service provider routers and switches has an off quarter
The market for service provider routers and switches was down across the board last quarter, according to a new report from Infonetics Research.
Infonetics looks at the market every quarter, and found that every segment was down, bringing the overall figure down 5% from the fourth quarter of 2006, to $2.5 billion. Still, though, the market is up 10% over the first quarter of 2006.
The report echoes a recent theme for last quarter. Last week, Dell’Oro Group was reporting that the market for LAN switches saw a “substantial decline” in the first three months of the year.
Like Dell’Oro Group’s outlook on the LAN switch market, Infonetics is saying that the market for service provider routers and switches will bounce back over the next few years. The research firm estimates that service providers worldwide will spend $56.4 billion on their switches and routers from 2006 to 2010.
Carrier Ethernet switch sales were up 13% from the same period last year. Cisco holds a substantial lead in that market, with a 63% share. Next are Huawei, Siemens and Nortel.
In routers, Cisco also leads, naturally, with a 49% share, followed by Juniper and Alcatel-Lucent.
If you were still wondering about ATM switches, wonder no more – the market for ATM switches was down 34% from the first quarter of 2006 to the first quarter of 2007, though it was down just 2% from the previous quarter. Infonetics says multiservice ATM switch revenue dropped from close to $5 billion in 2000 to just over $1.3 billion in 2006.
