"IDC witnessed a strong start to 2021 for the global Ethernet switch market, as macroeconomic conditions improved and a growing number of organizations worldwide demonstrated perseverance and digital resilience in the face of the rolling challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic," said Brad Casemore, research vice president, Datacentre and Multicloud Networks at IDC.
Ethernet switch highlights
The 2Q21 Ethernet switch market had strong results across most parts of the world. In Asia/Pacific, the People's Republic of China revenues grew 11.6% year over year while Japan's market increased 8.3%. Excluding China and Japan, the rest of the Asia-Pacific market rose 20.5% year over year in the quarter, buoyed by the market in Singapore growing 58.2% annually.
"Enterprises made notable investments in their campus networks, while hyperscalers and other providers of cloud services continue to drive growth in high-bandwidth datacentre switching," he concluded.
Port shipments
Overall port shipments increased 28.4%, driven by strength in the non-datacentre portion of the Ethernet switch market. Non-datacentre Ethernet switch revenues grew 17.7% in 2Q21 with port shipments increasing 36.1%.
The non-datacentre ethernet switch portion of the market makes up 88.6% of port shipments and 58.5% of total market revenues with the balance of revenues and port shipments in the datacentre portion of the market.
In the datacentre segment, revenues rose 2.4% year over year, while port shipments declined 10.6%.
High-speed switches
The higher-speed segments of the Ethernet switch market continue to see significant growth, driven by hyperscalers and cloud providers.
Market revenues for 200/400 GbE switches grew 132.5% from the first quarter to the second quarter of 2021, with port shipments more than tripling (+206.0%) on a sequential basis.
100GbE revenues increased 15.4% on an annualized basis, while port shipments rose 11.4% year over year. 25/50 GbE revenues increased 25.6% year over year while port shipments rose 1.3%.
Low-speed switches
Lower-speed switches, a more mature part of the market, saw mixed results. 10GbE port shipments rose 3.1% year over year, but revenue declined 8.4%. 10Gb switches make up 23.4% of the market's total revenue.
1GbE switches increased 33.2% annually in port shipments and 14.4% in revenue. 1GbE accounts for 35.9% of the total Ethernet switch market's revenue.
2.5/5GbE revenue increased 25.3% sequentially from 1Q21 to 2Q21, while port shipments rose 26.6% quarter over quarter.
Market players
"Results in the Ethernet switch market were generally strong across the globe, indicating that most regions of the world continue to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic that caused decreased spending on network infrastructure," notes Petr Jirovsky, research director, IDC Networking Trackers.
Cisco finished 2Q21 with a 4.5% increase in overall Ethernet switch revenues and a market share of 44.1%. Cisco's combined service provider and enterprise router revenue grew 2.4% year over year with enterprise router revenue decreasing 9.8% and SP revenues increasing 10.1%. Cisco's combined SP and enterprise router market share stands at 34.2% in the quarter.
Huawei's Ethernet switch revenue increased 3.5% on an annualized basis, giving the company a market share of 11.1%. The company's combined SP and enterprise router revenue declined 8.5% year over year, giving the company a market share of 33.4%.
Arista Networks saw Ethernet switch revenues increase 31.6% in 2Q21, bringing its share of the total market to 7.5%.
H3C's Ethernet switch revenue increased 10.6% year over year, giving the company a market share of 7.0% in the quarter. In the combined service provider and enterprise routing market, H3C's revenues increased 32.6%, giving the company a 2.5% market share.
"The growth in the second quarter of 2021 compared to the same period in 2019 indicates strong fundamentals for the market, which is a positive sign for the future," Jirovsky concluded.
