Telecom, datacom equipment spending will exceed $1 trillion over 5 years says Infonetics

July 21, 2014
Worldwide, sales of telecom and datacom equipment and software came to $183 billion in 2013, an uptick of 3% versus the previous year, according to the latest market research from Infonetics Research. And the outlook is bright going forward, concludes the firm’s 2014 “Telecom and Datacom Network Equipment and Software” report, which provides a big picture of the health of the overall market. Infonetics projects a cumulative $1.01 trillion will be spent by service providers and enterprises on telecom and datacom hardware and software over the five years from 2014 to 2018.

Worldwide, sales of telecom and datacom equipment and software came to $183 billion in 2013, an uptick of 3% versus the previous year, according to the latest market research from Infonetics Research. And the outlook is bright going forward, concludes the firm’s 2014 "Telecom and Datacom Network Equipment and Software" report, which provides a big picture of the health of the overall market. Infonetics projects a cumulative $1.01 trillion will be spent by service providers and enterprises on telecom and datacom hardware and software over the five years from 2014 to 2018.

"Despite the fact that enterprises and service providers are in the middle of massive network upheavals due to the evolution of software-defined networks [SDN] and network functions virtualization (NFV) technology, the telecom and datacom networking equipment and software market is on track to grow annually through 2018 with the fastest growth coming in 2015," said Jeff Wilson, principal analyst at Infonetics Research.

Michael Howard, co-founder of Infonetics and co-author of the report, added, "Looking at just the service provider equipment space, we're seeing a shakeup in vendor market share, with Huawei leapfrogging longtime number-one Ericsson to take the top spot in 2013. While Huawei's been doing well in a number of regions, China's economy is a key factor keeping Huawei's growth so strong."

Based on global revenue, the overall telecom and datacom network equipment and software market share leaders are, in rank order, Cisco, Huawei, Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent, and ZTE – the same top five vendors with virtually the same shares as the year before.

Vendor share positions held steady in the enterprise segment, with Cisco in the driver's seat and followed distantly by tightly bunched Avaya, Brocade, HP, and Juniper Networks (listed in alphabetical order; Infonetics did not share the rank order).

Asia Pacific put some breathing room between itself and North America in the regional race for telecom and datacom equipment and software revenue, growing 6% year-over-year as compared to North America's 4.5%; this trend is expected to continue through at least 2018, says Infonetics.

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