The global Ethernet switch market (Layer 2/3) revenues declined to reach $5.4 billion in the second quarter of 2013 (2Q13).

This figure represents a year-over-year decline of -1.1 percent, according to IDC's (News - Alert) Worldwide Quarterly Ethernet Switch and Router Tracker.

On a brighter note, the 2Q13 results increased 2.7 percent over a seasonally weaker first quarter on a sequential basis. Also, the global router market showed year-over-year growth of 3.7 percent, and IDC says this was the highest growth rate seen in two years.

The Ethernet switch market increased 4.9 percent year over year in North America in this quarter. Latin America also showed a small 0.9 percent year-over-year increase in this period.

On the other hand Asia/Pacific and Europe, Middle East & Africa (EMEA) registered -5.6 percent and -6.2 percent year-over-year declines respectively.

“The worldwide Ethernet switch market is increasingly a tale of two market segments with different market dynamics - the enterprise campus segment, which includes the network edge, and the higher growth datacenter segment that is driving 10GbE and 40GbE growth as cloud rollouts continue to increase,” said Rohit Mehra, vice president, Network Infrastructure at IDC.

IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Ethernet Switch and Router Tracker also shows that 10Gb Ethernet switch (Layer 2/3) revenue increased 12.9 percent year over year to $2.0 billion in 2Q13.

Also, the 10Gb Ethernet switch port shipments grew 52 percent year over year to 4.7 million ports in 2Q13. Apparently, the primary driver of the overall Ethernet switch market is 10GbE.

Other markets that did well include the worldwide Layer 4-7 switching market and worldwide enterprise and service provider Router market. Both markets did well in the 2Q13.

Cisco's (News - Alert) market share in the 10GbE market segment was 67 percent in 2Q13 and HP's Ethernet Switch revenue showed an increase of 10.4 percent quarter over quarter.

"As the market evolves towards a unified network edge in the enterprise, Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) is expected to hold its own for the foreseeable future as we look at new applications for the emerging Internet of Things," said Petr Jirovský, senior research analyst in IDC's Networking Trackers Group.