Router, carrier switch market up 17pc in 4Q09

BANGALORE, INDIA: Worldwide revenue from service provider IP edge routers, IP core routers, carrier Ethernet switches, and multiservice ATM switches jumped 17 percent in 4Q09, led by strong IP edge router sales.

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This is according to Infonetics Research's vendor market share report from the fourth quarter (4Q09) edition of its Service Provider Routers and Switches forecast report.

Michael Howard, co-founder and principal analyst, carrier and data center networks, Infonetics Research, said: "The top two vendors in the service provider router space, Cisco and Juniper, together went from owning 69 percent of the worldwide router market in 2008 to 59 percent in 2009, while Alcatel-Lucent, Huawei, and others gained share."

The report further adds that while the combined market was buoyed in the fourth quarter, it was not enough to offset losses for the year, bringing the overall market down 12 percent from 2008 to 2009, to $11.1 billion.

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Multiservice ATM switches led the downward trend, as expected (this segment has been in decline for many quarters now).

Asia Pacific is the only region to post year-over-year growth in IP edge and core router revenue, up 19 percent in 2009 from 2008, pushed in no small part by the Chinese government telecom stimulus and the competitiveness of the newly re-organized Chinese operators.

Interestingly, smaller player Tellabs pushed past Ericsson in 2009, putting them in the top five for the first time. Tellabs had an especially strong year based on their focus on the mobile sector.

"All six of the top router vendors posted strong double-digit revenue increases in the fourth quarter. We expect modest growth in the router segment to continue in 2010 as carriers carry out fixed-mobile convergence strategies for their router networks," he adds.