India’s networking market grows only 2.9% y-o-y in Q2: IDC

India’s networking market which includes ethernet switch, routers, and wireless local-area network (WLAN)  segments witnessed a mere 2.9% year-over-year (y-o-y) growth in terms of vendor revenues during 2Q22 (April-June), according to research firm International Data Corporation (IDC). IDC also added that it expects the second half of the year to have significantly higher business compared to the first half.

According to the research firm, the overall market is expected to grow in single digits in terms of compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for 2021–2026, owing to the increased adoption of emerging technologies such as cloud, IoT, mobility, etc. which would drive incremental revenues. IDC also expects large investments for 5G rollouts in the next couple of years.

Switching business in India had a 6.4% YoY growth by vendor revenue during 2Q22. Non-direct current (DC) switching declined by 2.9% YoY owing to the shortage of equipment in the access and distribution layer. But with industries such as services, manufacturing, finance, and telecom contributing to DC switching, this segment grew at a YoY growth rate of 19.8% owing to the pent-up demand that has started to come in post-pandemic. Cisco continued to lead the Ethernet Switch market with a 51.1% share during 2Q22, followed by Arista and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE).

The country’s router market too declined 13.4% YoY by vendor revenues during 2Q22. Having mentioned that there was a sequential increase of 13.7% quarter-over-quarter (QoQ). The enterprise router business grew by 16.3% y-o-y with investments aimed at regular refreshes and SD-WAN deployments. Apart from telecommunications, the key verticals for routing include services, finance, and the government. Cisco leads the router market too with a 62.6% market share in 2Q22 followed by Juniper and Nokia.
The WLAN segment, however, witnessed a strong growth of 19.2% y-o-y by vendor revenue owing to the growth exhibited by the enterprise wireless segment. Demand from verticals like education, retail, and hospitality, which remained muted during the pandemic, have started to spend on wireless infrastructure and had significant business during 2Q22. There has also been a significant uptake on cloud-managed wireless over the last four quarters, said IDC. 

Within enterprise-class WLAN, Wi-Fi 6 (AX) continued to dominate the market with a 70% share by vendor revenue. With a market share of 28.6%, TP-Link was the market leader in the WLAN segment during 2Q22. Within the enterprise-class WLAN segment, Cisco was the market leader with 28.2% market share followed by HPE with 12.5%, said the research firm.

Sudharsan Raghunathan, Associate Research Manager, Enterprise Networking, IDC India, said, “With India looking to roll out 5G, the technology will play a pivotal role in the growth of the enterprise networking market."

He also expects, Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel will incur significant expenditure on network infrastructure aimed at building edge data centres to deliver the 5G promise of faster speeds and lower latencies.