The stats for sales of network switches are in for Q4 2017. Only one of the top 5 networking vendors was able to squeeze out a small gain in switch sales. The data comes from New York-based NPD. NPD tracks monthly network switch sales data from the sales channel, distributors, and resellers in North America.
The article on CRN notes that the total number of switches sold through the channel in the quarter was 514,095. The number is up slightly from 510,822 in the fourth quarter of 2016, according to NPD. Here are the five vendors that sold the most switches through the channel in the fourth quarter, according to NPD.
D-Link Systems
Taiwan-based D-Link Systems (2332:TT) sold 25,259 switches during the fourth quarter, according to NPD statistics. That total kept the company steady with the same period in 2016 when it sold 25,277. D-Link did not have a switch model among the top 10-selling units during the quarter. Its market share was unchanged at 4.9%, CRN said.
TP-Link switch sales
According to NPD’s data, of all the five best-selling switch brands, TP-Link saw the steepest decline during this period. The company based in Shenzhen, China sold 26,023 switches in Q4 ’17 compared with 29,798 in Q4 ’16. That’s a 12.7 percent year-over-year decrease. There is one bright spot for the firm, the article reports that the company’s TLSF1005D Ethernet switch was the third-best-selling unit during the quarter. But that was not enough to prevent a market share decline from 5.8 percent in 2016 to 5.1 percent in 2017.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise switch sales
The news from NDP is not good for former networking giant Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) either. The Palo Alto, CA-based firm saw a 1.8 percent decline in switches sold from 55,923 in Q4 ’16 to 54,941 switches in Q4 ’17. The quarter’s total was enough for a 10.7 percent market share, down slightly from the year-ago period. No HPE switch models were among the top 10 for the quarter, according to NPD.
Netgear sales
CRN reports that sales also slipped for Netgear. The number 2 switch company saw its market share dip from 18.3% to 17.9% year over year. The California-based firm sold 92,274 switches through the channel in the fourth quarter, down slightly from the 93,531 it sold in the same period a year ago, NPD said. Netgear had four switches in the top 10-best-selling switches during the quarter, including the top two models, the FS105 and GS105NA five-port models.
Cisco switch sales
Cisco
(CSCO) was able to hold on to the #1 switch vendor position according to NDP. It sold 225,051 units during the period, a 5.7 percent increase that boosted the company’s market share to 43.8 percent from 41.7 a year earlier. Six of the top 10 best-selling switches in the quarter were Cisco Catalyst‘s led by the WS-C2960X 24– and 48-port models.
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What happened to the network switch market? It’s still reeling from the 2007/08 recession and the Wi-Fi takeoff. Other than the Cisco switches, most of the top switch models sold were unmanaged, desktop switches limited to 100 Mbps uplinks. These types of switches make it OK to randomly add an unauthorized switch at the desktop and POOF there does your data. These desktop switches with their limited feature set don’t include Spanning Tree, so users can create a network loop and take down the whole network segment.
Not much to shout about.
Where are the vendors? Brocade? Extreme? Juniper? Dell? I am old enough to remember when switch manufacturers had a #2 strategy. 3Com, Lucent, Bay/Nortel all came into my office and said they wanted to #2 – now they are gone.
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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.
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