1G and 10G switch price war heats up the L2-L3 Ethernet switch market; total sales up 12 percent

Fiber Optics Weekly Update, Nov 28, 2003

Worldwide layer 2 and layer 3 Ethernet switch revenue grew 12 percent between the second and third quarters to $3.1 billion, and is expected to grow from $11.8 billion this year to $15 billion in 2006, according to Infonetics Research's new quarterly market share and forecast service, L2-L3 Ethernet Switches. Worldwide port shipments will grow 75 percent from 161 million in 2003 to 279 million in 2006, representing a CAGR of 20 percent.

3Q03 Total Layer 2-3 Ethernet Switch Market Highlights

--Cisco is the worldwide leader with 61 percent revenue market share and 36 percent port market share

--HP is in second place in revenue market share with 10 percent, which is up from 9 percent revenue market share last quarter; they were the only vendor other than Cisco to increase their revenue market share during the quarter in this overall category

--NETGEAR claims second place in port market share with 12 percent, followed closely by 3Com and D-Link, both with 11 percent

L2-L3 Ethernet Switches tracks layer 2 and layer 3 Ethernet switches, broken out by fixed configuration switches and chassis switches. Both sub-categories are broken out by 10G, 1G, and 100M switches. Forecasts are updated quarterly and cover all regions (worldwide, North America, EMEA, Asia Pacific, and CALA). Companies tracked in this service include 3Com, Alcatel, Avaya, Allied Telesyn, Cisco, D-Link, Enterasys, Extreme, Foundry, HP, NETGEAR, Nortel, SMC, and others. For the table of contents, log on to the new Infonetics Research Information Portal and download it at http://www.info.infonetics.com or contact Larry Howard, vice president, at larry@infonetics.com, 408-298-7999 x225.