Router and Softswitch Market Posts Record 2011

According to a new report from market technology firm Infonetics Innovation – entitled "Service Provider Routers and Switches" – the fourth quarter of 2011 was a ground-breaking period for the IP edge router, IP core router and carrier Ethernet softswitch market segments and the manufacturers within them.

The carrier router

"The carrier router and switch market hit a record-high $14.5 billion in 2011, up 8 percent over 2010, making it the second largest telecom market segment afterwards mobile RAN infrastructure," confirmed Michael Howard, Infonetics Technology's co-founder and principal analyst for carrier networks, in a press release.

The vendor market share report -- which tracked telecom giants including Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Ericsson, Juniper, Tellabs, and more – analyzed the IP edge through applications like multiservice edge, broadband remote access server, Ethernet access transport, and Ethernet service edge.

"But paradoxically, 2011 results show signs of a slowdown in the market's overall growth rate. Why? Because in spite of continued double-digit percent annual growth in the largest market, Asia, and the smallest market, Latin America, the two mainstays of carrier routers and switches, North America and EMEA, are slowing. After all, the fundamental market drivers will pace the overall market forward, with growing fixed broadband traffic and exploding mobile broadband traffic on 3G and LTE (Long Term Evolution, latest standard in the mobile network technology) networks pushing many service providers to upgrade their access, aggregation, and core networks, including mobile backhaul," he said.

The report highlighted Cisco as the vendor leading the IP edge pack, commanding about one-third of the global market in 2011. In the meantime, heavyweight competitors Alcatel-Lucent – which retained the No. 2 spot for global router revenue in 4Q 2011 – as so then as Huawei, Juniper and ZTE, all increased respective market shares last year.