Strong sales of IP edge routers helped drive worldwide revenue of routers and switches 17 percent in Q4 09. However compelling the fourth quarter was, it could not prevent a 12 percent decline to $11.1 billion for the year.
Not surprisingly, the ongoing decline in sales of multiservice ATM switches--a segment that has continued to decline for multiple quarters--was a major contributor to the downward trend.
In 2009 there were various positional shifts amongst the router/switch vendors. Cisco and Juniper may have continued to lead the market, but their market share dropped from 69 percent in 2008 to 59 percent in 2009, while Alcatel-Lucent and Huawei increased share. At the same time, Tellabs's focus on the wireless sector enabled it to beat out Ericsson and be listed on the top five switching/routing vendor segments for the first time.
"All six of the top router vendors posted strong double-digit revenue increases in the fourth quarter, and we expect modest growth in the router segment to continue in 2010 as carriers carry out fixed-mobile convergence strategies for their router networks," said Michael Howard, co-founder and principal analyst for carrier and data center networks at Infonetics Research in a release.
On the regional front, Asia Pacific stood out with 19 percent year-over-year growth in IP edge and core router revenue. Infonetics attributes growth in Asia-Pacific to the Chinese government's aggressive telecom stimulus and reorganization of its top service providers.
For more:
- see the release here