Sales of service provider edge routers and Carrier Ethernet switches declined 8% year on year in the first half of 2019, says Dell’Oro Group in a recently released market research report that covers the second quarter of this year.
“The confluence of tepid telecom spending, maturing 4G mobile backhaul deployments, and new product introductions have contributed to the reduction in demand for routers and switches,” said Shin Umeda, vice president at Dell’Oro Group. “Telecom operators in the US have pared down their spending well below historical levels as they evaluate new technologies and architectures for 5G backhaul, and on top of that, the massive network buildouts in China are slowing after years of growth.
“On the positive side, Cisco, Juniper, and Nokia have introduced major upgrades to their edge router portfolios that should bring customers back in the coming quarters,” added Umeda. Cisco announced enhancements to its upgrades ASR 9000 edge routing platform earlier this month, while Juniper Networks has upgraded its MX Series for the demands of 5G networks as well as announced a full embrace of 400 Gigabit Ethernet.
Cisco, Huawei, Nokia, and Juniper Networks were the market share leaders in the second quarter, according to Dell’Oro. A bounce in European hardware sales was not enough to offset fully declines in North America and Asia Pacific.
The Dell’Oro Group “Router & Carrier Ethernet Switch Quarterly Report” covers the service provider core and edge router, Carrier Ethernet switch, and enterprise router markets for current and historical time periods. The report includes qualitative analysis and statistics for vendor market shares, revenue, average selling prices, and unit and port shipments.
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