Date: 26/03/2012

Enterprise router sales rose 1% over 3Q11, to $920 million in 4Q11

Market research firm Infonetics Research released excerpts from its fourth quarter 2011 (4Q11) Enterprise Routers vendor market share and forecast report.

"The demand for routers is there-overall volumes are essentially back to pre-recession levels-but buying patterns have changed and that in turn is hurting revenue, still down some 18% from the pre-recession peak," explains Matthias Machowinski, directing analyst for enterprise networks and video at Infonetics Research. "While the high-end of the market remains robust as buyers invest in congested and mission-critical parts of their network, there is significant substitution in the bulk of the market (branch and mid-range routing) with lower cost solutions."

ENTERPRISE ROUTER MARKET HIGHLIGHTS
Enterprise router sales rose 1% over 3Q11, to $920 million in 4Q11
From the year-ago quarter (4Q10), enterprise router sales are down 3%
For the full year, the enterprise router market is up a modest 2% from 2010 to 2011 to $3.5 billion
Growth in the enterprise router market in 2011 was driven almost entirely by China, which saw a 34% jump in revenue from the previous year
While Cisco's share of the enterprise router market dropped a couple of points in 2011, it still commands nearly 3/4 of the global market, and reversed a downward trend with a nice bump up in router revenue in the final quarter of 2011
HP more than doubled its enterprise router market share in 2011, thanks in large part to its exposure to the fast-growing Chinese market