SOURCE: Infonetics Research

December 19, 2007 12:31 ET

Ethernet switch market up 10% in 3Q07; Cisco posts big gains

BOSTON, MA--(Marketwire - December 19, 2007) - Sales of Ethernet switches jumped 10% in the third quarter of 2007, reaching $4.6 billion worldwide, according to Infonetics Research's latest "Ethernet and Application Switches"report.

"The big story in the Ethernet switching market continues to be 10 Gigabit Ethernet, with strong adoption and tremendous growth in the chassis and layer 3 segments," said Infonetics Research's Matthias Machowinski, directing analyst for enterprise voice and data and lead analyst of the report. "Cisco entered the 10 Gigabit Ethernet layer 3 fixed switch segment in 2Q07, and port shipments have tripled since then. The 10G segment should get really interesting over the next couple of quarters, once 10GBase T-based products hit the market, and lower pricing further boosts 10G adoption."

Other highlights from the report:

--  Cisco contributed $318 million, or 77%, of the Ethernet switch
    segment's $414 million gain in the third quarter, improving their market
    share lead
--  After Cisco, the revenue market share leaders in the Ethernet switch
    market share are ProCurve and then 3Com/H3C; NETGEAR is 2nd for port share
--  F5 leads in worldwide application switch unit and port market share
--  Almost all segments of the Ethernet switch market did well this
    quarter; only chassis 100M and chassis PoE declined
--  The application switch market is fairing particularly well, with a
    number of vendors posting significant sequential growth in 3Q07; the
    application switch market is expected to easily pass $1 billion in revenue
    this year
--  Ethernet switch port shipments are up 10% between 2Q07 and 3Q07
--  Almost 1/2 of all Ethernet switch revenue comes from North America in
    3Q07, about 1/3 comes from EMEA, and a 1/5 comes from Asia Pacific
    

Infonetics' switch report tracks application switches and Ethernet switches broken out by fixed configuration (unmanaged vs. managed with a layer 2 vs. layer 3 split), chassis, and PoE by form factor and speed. Forecasts are updated quarterly. Companies tracked include 3Com/H3C, Alcatel-Lucent, Blade, Cisco, Citrix Netscaler, D-Link, Extreme, F5, Force10, Foundry, Huawei, Linksys, NETGEAR, Nortel, ProCurve, Radware, SMC, and others.

Download sample data by logging in to Infonetics' online portal from www.infonetics.com. For sales, contact Larry Howard, vice president, at larry@infonetics.com or +1 (408) 583-3335.

Infonetics Research (www.infonetics.com) is an international market research and consulting firm specializing in data networking and telecom. Services include quarterly market share and forecasting, end-user survey research, service provider survey research, and service provider capex analysis.