During the third quarter of 2006, global sales of service provider packet-transport equipment grew to $2.3 billion, research firm and consultancy Ovum-RHK said Tuesday.
The growth represents a two percent increase over the previous quarter, and a nine percent increase from third quarter 2005.
Ovum-RHK broke the market down into segments to offer some additional perspective on how the increases were manifested. The tables below summarizes those findings.
Technology-focused Market Segments
|
Segment
|
3Q06 Sales
|
Percent Change From 3Q05
|
IP/MPLS core
|
$494 million
|
> 8
|
IP/MPLS edge
|
$1,043 million
|
> 31
|
ATM/MPLS
|
$362 million
|
< 24
|
IP/Ethernet
|
$416 million
|
> 6
|
Application-focused Market Segments
|
Segment
|
3Q06 Sales
|
Percent Change from 3Q05
|
IP Transport and Services
|
$802 million
|
> 11
|
Ethernet Transport and Services
|
$793 million
|
> 29
|
Legacy Transport and Services
|
$469 million
|
< 16
|
Subscriber Services/BRAS
|
$247 million
|
> 10
|
As the tables show, and perhaps not too surprisingly, one of the two segments that experienced a decrease is sales was Legacy Transport and Services.
Also of note on the high end, IP transport/services and Ethernet both made very strong appearances, bringing in the first and second largest chunk of sales for the application-focused market segment. Clearly these technologies are hot stuff.
During the course of its research, Ovum-RHK also found that the IP transport and services market continue to be dominated by Cisco and Juniper—those companies held 60 percent and 22 percent of the market, respectively, for the third quarter of 2006.
The tables below summarize other market leadership findings.
Ethernet transport and services
|
Company
|
Percent Share
|
Cisco
|
67
|
Alcatel (News - Alert)
|
16
|
Subscriber services
|
Company
|
Percent Share
|
Cisco
|
43
|
Juniper
|
31
|
Redback
|
25
|
Legacy transport and services
|
Company
|
Percent Share
|
Nortel (News - Alert)
|
24
|
Alcatel
|
19
|
Cisco
|
17
|
Lucent
|
17
|
IP/MPLS core
|
Company
|
Percent Share
|
Cisco
|
62
|
Juniper
|
34
|
IP/MPLS edge
|
Company
|
Percent Share
|
Cisco
|
52
|
Alcatel
|
17
|
Juniper
|
14
|
Combined IP/MPLS
platform revenues
|
Company
|
Percent Share
|
Cisco
|
56
|
Juiper
|
20
|
Alcatel
|
11
|
“With the exception of Cisco, who was buoyed by strong orders from China and India, 3Q06 was a challenging quarter for most equipment vendors,” said Mark Seery, Vice President of Ovum-RHK’s IP Service Infrastucture department, in a statement.
Seery added: “With some concerns entering 4Q06 about whether the usual end-of-year budget flush will happen, we are looking forward to the first half of 2007 for stronger growth as some major deployments in Asia and North America may start to grow spending.”
Mae Kowalke previously wrote for Cleveland Magazine in Ohio and The Burlington Free Press in Vermont. To see more of her articles, please visit Mae Kowalke’s columnist page. Also check out her Wireless Mobility blog.
Internet Protocol (IP) | X |
IP stands for Internet Protocol, a data-networking protocol developed throughout the 1980s. It is the established standard protocol for transmitting and receiving data
in packets over the Internet. I...more |
Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) | X |
In a Provider Provisioned Virtual Private Network, there may be more than one label. To begin with, IP packets may have a number of labels or "tags" attached to them. MPLS is just one type of label....more |
Ethernet | X |
An industry-standard network hardware specification (IEEE 802.3) developed by IEEE that offers dedicated network (and Internet) access. Standard Ethernet is half-duplex transmission system. That is, d...more |