India’s Enterprise Networking Market Grew 6.9% in Q1 of 2022
However, there were several pressures that the industry faced such as component shortage as well as rising logistics costs
Vendors in India made more money selling ethernet switches, routers and WLAN equipment in the first quarter of 2022, representing a 6.9% year-on-year growth, a new study says. Hardening costs and shipment challenges notwithstanding, this growth in India’s enterprise networking market was quite commendable.
In it’s report, the International Data Corporation (IDC), said the market is expected to grow in single digits CAGR between 2021 and 2026. Increased adoption of emerging technologies around the cloud, IoT, and mobility could potentially drive increasemental revenues as would the large investments required to rollout 5G networks in India post September this year.
There are problems though
“The networking market in India (in terms of vendor revenue) is expected to have a gradual and steady growth for quarters to come. However, the growth cannot be directly construed as an increase in demand,” says Sudharsan Raghunathan, Senior Market Analyst, Enterprise Networking, IDC India.
Due to the rising costs of network infrastructure resulting from a variety of reasons such as the weakening rupee, increase in transportation and logistics costs and the continued pressure caused by component shortages, the vendor revenue numbers could keep keep going north at a higher pace compared to the units that are getting shipped.
What businesses topped and what tanked?
Switching business in India had a 17.6% YoY growth during 1Q22. The non-DC switching business had a YoY growth of 14.2% owing to the professional services segment which was spending the pent-up demand after offices resumed in India. DC switching had a strong growth of 22.5% YoY during 1Q22 owing to the weak DC switching growth during 1Q21.
Cisco continues to lead the Ethernet Switch market with a 56.3% share during 1Q22, followed by Juniper and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE). Key industries that contributed to the switching business include services, finance, and manufacturing.
India’s router market declined by 14.7% in 1Q22, said the IDC report. Service providers contributed to 63.4% of the router investments. Both, enterprise as well as service provider routing, faced a decline with enterprise taking a strong fall of 26.4% and service providers declining by 6.1%. Apart from telecom other key verticals for routing include finance, services, and manufacturing. Here too, Cisco leads the router market with a 62.2% market share in 1Q22 followed by Juniper and Nokia.
WLAN segment witnessed a growth of 9.1% YoY in 1Q22. While the enterprise WLAN grew strongly with pent-up demand from organizations coming through, the consumer wireless demand softened with offices reopening in the country. Enterprise WLAN segment exhibited a very strong 38.5% YoY growth while consumer WLAN declined by 20.8% YoY. Cloud-managed wireless had a good uptake in India owing to ease of deployment and manageability.
With a market share of 24.9%, TP-Link was the market leader in the WLAN segment during 1Q22. Within the enterprise class WLAN segment, Cisco was the market leader with 24.1% market share followed by Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) with 22.5%.
