2Q15 kind to carrier router and switch market: IHS

The carrier routing and switching market rebounded from a typically tepid first quarter to reach $3.9 billion, says the "IHS Infonetics Service Provider Routers and Switches" report from IHS (NYSE: IHS). That's a sequential increase of 19%.

"While the SDN (software-defined networking) hesitation that we've been talking about the past many quarters is still in play in the carrier routing and switching space, core router upgrades and replacements prompted by the move to 100GbE contributed to a nice uptick in the second quarter," said Michael Howard, senior research director for carrier networks at IHS.

However IHS still believes that the evolution toward SDN will continue to dampen service provider router and Carrier Ethernet switch sales. The market research firm believes worldwide sales of these systems will brow at only a 2% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2014 to 2019.

So suppliers should revel in their recent success. Carrier switching and routing revenue grew from a year ago in all major geographical regions except Asia Pacific. The usually strong region saw a year-on-year decline of 16%.

Cisco maintained its market share lead over Number 2 Huawei during the quarter, with Juniper Networks squeaking past Alcatel-Lucent for the third spot in the table.

The quarterly "IHS Infonetics Service Provider Routers and Switches" research report covers IP edge and core routers, vRouters, and Carrier Ethernet switches. The research service provides worldwide, regional, China, and Japan market share, market size, forecasts through 2019, analysis, and trends.

For more information on carrier routers and suppliers, visit the Lightwave Buyer's Guide.