Cisco increases networking dominance

Networking giant's EMEA revenue share increases to 55 per cent in Q3, IDC numbers reveal

Cisco has seized the lion's share of the EMEA router, switch and wireless LAN market

Cisco tightened its stranglehold on the EMEA networking market in the third quarter of 2008 as the market continued to be insulated from the full effects of the downturn.

According to research house IDC, the giant saw its share of EMEA router, switch and wireless LAN (WLAN) revenues grow from 53 to 55 per cent between the second and third quarter of 2008.

Nearest rivals Juniper, Alcatel-Lucent and HP ProCurve mustered a 13.6 share between them.

According to IDC’s EMEA Quarterly Network Tracker, third quarter networking revenues declined by five per cent on an annual comparison. However, with the residential market stripped out, sales fell by just one per cent annually and IDC gave the sector a clean bill of health.

Evelien Wiggers, research manager for european enterprise communications infrastructure at IDC, said: “Although the economic climate has not fully hit the networking market, growth is definitely lower compared with 2007 and we expect Q408 and 2009 to be more difficult for networking vendors as customer deals are postponed.

“However, we believe that the fundamentals for network growth continue to be strong and that the networking market continues to see growth albeit at a much slower rate than before the economic crisis.”

WLAN equipment sales grew eight per cent year on year, ethernet switch sales rose one per cent and router revenues declined by four per cent.