Week in research: Enterprise routers struggle globally; home automation a $12B market

Enterprise routers show faint promise: North America sales of enterprise routers were up 8 percent year over year, Infonetics Research reports--a glimmer of hope for a regional market that dropped 10 percent from 4Q 2011 to Q1 2012. Globally, the market declined 9 percent sequentially to $834 million. "Meanwhile, economic trouble in Europe is clearly visible, with sales falling both sequentially and from a year ago, and the situation is unlikely to improve soon," said Matthias Machowinski, directing analyst for enterprise networks and video. "In China, where router sales popped last quarter, the market dropped 20 percent sequentially, and worryingly, year-over-year growth slowed to a crawl, up just 2 percent." Machowinski adds: "Despite the seasonally down first quarter, the enterprise router market continues to grow, albeit slowly. There is demand for routers, but the quest for lower-priced equipment, competition, economic concerns, and a weak public sector make stronger revenue growth elusive." News release

Infonetics enterprise routers 2012

Home automation a key growth area: HAS (home automation services) are experiencing a "revolution ... in the appeal, deliver, support, and pricing of home automation systems as the technology moves from being a high ticket investment to becoming another newly essential monthly service," says principal analyst Jonathan Collins of ABI Research. As telcos like Verizon (NYSE: VZ) and AT&T (NYSE: T), cable companies like Comcast (Nasdaq: CMCSA) and other service providers jump into managed home automation, the global market for HAS is expected to grow from 2011's 1.5 million shipments to 20 million installed units by 2017. News release

Big growth for IP traffic on the horizon: Cisco Systems (Nasdaq: CSCO) predicts that IP traffic will continue to grow at a 29 percent compound annual rate through 2016. The provider's annual visual networking index, released Wednesday, forecasts that IP traffic will be 1.3 zettabytes, the equivalent of 38 million DVDs, per hour.  News release

Cisco VNI forecast 2012-2016