India’s networking market grew almost 34% in Q4 2018: IDC

India’s networking market, which comprises Ethernet switches, routers and wireless local area network (WLAN), has grown on the back of increased investments from enterprises and new service provider deployments, a report by research firm International Data Corp has shown.

The segment rose by 33.8% year-on-year in the last quarter of 2018, the report stated.

The market for Ethernet switches stood at $148.1 million in vendor revenue for Q4 2018. The increase was attributed to an uptake in analog-to-digital converters, spending from government and telecommunications organisations, said the report.

The switches market was dominated by networking technology giant Cisco, which had 60.7% of the market share, followed by information technology firm Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Chinese smartphone maker Huawei whose share stood at 6.6% and 3.5%, respectively. Handset maker Nokia took fourth place with 2.8% while software firm Citrix had a share of 2.2%.

“Networking is the backbone for any of the IT transformation initiatives. Networking systems should be more agile, scalable with better control and security to enable organisations to adapt quickly to business innovations,” said Dileep Nadimpalli, research manager, storage, IDC India. He added that software-defined networking would be necessary for faster time to market and optimising network resources.

In terms of revenues from routers, Cisco still held a lion’s share of the market at 69.5% while Nokia had a 15.8% share. The report said that the router market grew by 43.4% in 2018, mainly due to network upgrades and investments from telecommunications in 4G VoLTE.

However, the WLAN segment, which was worth $57 million in revenue and grew by 38.5% year-on-year, witnessed stiff competition from Cisco, HP, TP-Link and D-Link, which have market shares of 20.5%, 17.1%, 15.8% and 13.7%, respectively.

As hybrid cloud, multi-cloud, mobility and Internet of Things see increased uptake, their usage demands demand more networking resources and make day-to-day network operations complex, said Ranganath Sadasiva, director of enterprise solutions at IDC India.

“Organisations are opting for next-generation networking solutions to address automation and orchestration needs arising due to complex network environments,” he added.

IDC also said that it expects large investments for 5G rollouts in 2020 and 2021.