The worldwide Ethernet switch market (Layer 2/3) recorded $6.7 billion in revenue in 2Q18, an increase of 4.8% year over year, according to IDC Quarterly Ethernet Switch Tracker and IDC Quarterly Router Tracker.
"Dynamics in the Ethernet switching market continue to shift as enterprise and service providers are demanding higher-speed Ethernet switch products," said Rohit Mehra, vice president, Network Infrastructure at IDC. "While different regions are at varying stages of maturity, the market is clearly looking to capitalize on new equipment, which is helping to drive vendor revenue growth."
Some highlights:
- The worldwide total enterprise and service provider (SP) router market recorded $3.8 billion in revenue in 2Q18, decreasing 2.5% on a year-over-year basis.
- 100Gb shipments reached more than 2.8 million ports and $893.5 million in revenue in 2Q18.
- 100Gb now accounts for 13.2% of total market revenue, compared to 8.1% during the same quarter in 2017.
- 25GbE switch products continue to gain traction with shipments exceeding 2.0 million ports and $197 million in revenue in 2Q18.
- Port shipments of 40GbE, meanwhile, grew 2.1% year over year, but price erosion for these products led 40 GbE revenues to fall 13.5% compared to last year.
- The 2Q18 Ethernet switch market recorded its strongest growth in the Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) region (APeJ), which increased 16.6% year over year in 2Q18. The China market, which makes up the largest share of the region's total, drove the growth with a 26.4% revenue increase between 2Q17 and 2Q18. The Western Europe region grew 4.3% from 2Q17 with Germany – the region's largest market – increasing 13.2% year over year.
- Japan grew 3.8%. The United States, the largest regional market in the world, was down 1.6% year over year.
- The worldwide enterprise and service provider router market fell 2.5% on a year-over-year basis in 2Q18 with the service provider segment, which accounts for 76.9% of the market, declining 3.9% and the enterprise portion growing 2.5% year over year. The service provider segment was negatively impacted by weak CAPEX spending by major communications service providers, especially in the United States.
