Digitisation propels India’s networking growth
Article By : IDC
The Ethernet switch, router and WLAN markets are expected to grow in single digits in terms of compound annual growth rate for 2016–2021, according to IDC India.
The Ethernet switch market in India has seen a 12.4% year-on-year growth in the first quarter of 2017, standing at ₹860.81 crore ($126.6 million) by vendor revenue, according to new data from market research firm IDC.
Cisco retained its dominance in the Ethernet Switch market due to increased spending from both enterprise and service providers' segments in Q1 2017, followed by HPE and Huawei. This quarter the growth in data centre has triggered the growth of players such as ODM direct in rising the ladder.
Figure 1: India Ethernet switch market share by vendor revenue. (Source: IDC)
The router market in the country also witnessed a year-on-year growth of 33.5% in Q1 and stood at ₹628.95 crore ($92.5 million) by vendor revenue, according to IDC. The service provider segment was driven by the growth in high-end routers due to regular refreshes to upgrade the infrastructure requirements driven by the 3G, 4G deployments and mobile back hauls. This is also dependent on the fact that the service provider segment is becoming more competitive with the growing demand of 4G services. In the enterprise segment, the high-end and mid-range routers were driving the growth.
Figure 2: India router market share by vendor revenue. (Source: IDC)
Cisco led the router market in Q1 2017, due to significant uptake of from telecommunication players. Nokia witnessed a strong YoY growth while Huawei saw a YoY decline in Q1 2017.
Meanwhile, the WLAN market stood at ₹287.62 crore ($42.3 million) by vendor revenue in Q1, which is a decline of 8.5% compared to Q4 2016, according to IDC. The slow growth was attributed to the dampened demand from all the segments. This quarter all the segments saw a dip as the market slowed down after witnessing a traditional growth during the last quarter. Education, business services and government were the key contributors in the Enterprise segment this quarter.
Figure 3: India WLAN market share by vendor revenue. (Source: IDC)
D-Link retained its top spot in Q1 2017, predominantly due to contribution from gateway router product category. Cisco led in the enterprise deployment segment, followed by HPE in Q1 2017.
“The digitisation efforts by the government will continue to have a positive impact on the networking market. The various smart city projects have laid a foundation to create a digital ecosystem highlighting the need to upgrade the current network infrastructure requirement. The various private and government players are contributing towards increasing the digital footprint," said Niharika Kumar, senior networking analyst, IDC.