Lan switches drive networking world

Cisco still biggest kid on the block

LAN switches have driven the worldwide networking equipment industry in the second quarter of 1998 as revenues bettered $2.1 billion. This represents a 78 per cent increase over the same period last year according to preliminary figures from researchers at Dataquest, part of the Gartner group. Cisco still leads the LAN switch market with a greater than 40 per cent share. This time last year the company held just 27 per cent of the market. “The switch market has been driven by the demand for more efficient use of bandwidth,” said John Armstrong, principal analyst at Dataquest. “As an early entrant into the market, Cisco has benefited most from the rapid adoption of this technology.” The market itself grew 168 per cent in the second quarter, with the fast Ethernet segment performing especially well bringing in $1 billion in revenue during Q2. All segments of the router market did well providing evidence that the enterprise networking business remains strong growth engine in the market, said Dataquest. The media hubs market suffered in the quarter as prices fell. Despite shipments of shared media hubs increasing 13.8 per cent, revenue fell 33.5 per cent. All top vendors were hit by the price erosion, but 3Com held onto the market lead with a share of 23.5 per cent. Bay networks came in a close second with 21.3 per cent of the market, Dataquest said. Additional information about the report is available from the Gartner Group’s Web site. ®