Infonetics: Ethernet Switch Market Declines

The Ethernet switch market struggled in the first quarter of 2009, according to a new report from Infonetics Research.

"Exacerbated by weak worldwide economic conditions, the Ethernet switch market dropped more than $1 billion in the first quarter of 2009, much more than the normal seasonal first-quarter drop. Demand for Ethernet and application switches is still there, but budgets are under pressure, so we witnessed a shift to lower-priced products, such as 100M PoE switches instead of 1G PoE," said Matthias Machowinski, directing analyst, Enterprise Voice and Data, Infonetics Research.

In 1Q09, the Ethernet switch market plunged 26 percent sequentially, from $4.4 billion to $3.3 billion. Virtually all switch port shipments were down, with the only real bright spots being 1G PoE, 10G layer 3 fixed managed, and 10G chassis switches.

Infonetics says year-over-year growth is expected to continue in negative territory for the remainder of 2009, but should turn positive in 2010.

The report goes on to say that adoption of 1G is farther along in the web-managed switch segment than the fully managed fixed layer 2 and 3 switch segments. Declines were similar for the Application switch segment, with revenue down more than 20 percent vs. 1Q08 and 4Q08; many vendors were down, with only Citrix and Radware reporting higher sales.

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