Infonetics: Alcatel-Lucent takes No. 2 spot in worldwide edge router market

Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU), once a relative newcomer in the routing world that was traditionally a two-horse race between Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) and Juniper (NYSE: JNPR), continues to advance its position in the IP router market reveals Infonetics' fourth quarter 2010 "Service Provider Routers and Switches" vendor market share report.

Infonetics carrier Ethernet switches

Michael Howard, co-founder and principal analyst for carrier and data center networks at Infonetics Research, said that "Alcatel-Lucent has been steadily taking IP router market share for the past three years, to the point that, even though they only play in the edge router segment, they are now number 2 worldwide in the total IP edge and core router market."

The fourth quarter was particularly strong for Alcatel-Lucent as revenue was up 56 percent sequentially, a factor that helped them surpass Juniper Networks, which also "posted solid growth" in Q4 due to an increase in service provider sales. Cisco's star has not faded, however, as its global IP router and carrier Ethernet switch revenue 21.6 percent in 2010, pushing their 2010 market share to 42.5 percent.   

Led by North American service providers expanding their retail and wholesale Ethernet offerings, the carrier Ethernet switch and IP router market grew 20.5 percent to $12.8 billion in 2010 over 2009. During the fourth quarter IP edge and core routing and carrier Ethernet switch equipment sales were up 15.2 percent from Q3 and up 23.4 percent from Q4 2009. As expected, multiservice legacy ATM switches continued their inevitable decline, down 48 percent to $308 million in 2010.

For more:
- see the release

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