The demand for high-bandwidth data is driving many network administrators to turn to gigabit speeds and networks to benefit from the most automatic, centralized monitoring and control. Ethernet switches are needed to transmit data at Ethernet standard rates, connecting different parts of a network together. Providers are innovating switches engineered to support a home or business’ ability to stream HD video, download high-resolution files, share and distribute files within a network and support a network’s evolution.

According to the recently released International Data Corporation (IDC (News - Alert)) Worldwide Quarterly Ethernet Switch and Router Tracker, the Asia-Pacific region, excluding Japan, is a particularly strong market for Ethernet switch market followed by Middle East & Africa (MEA) and Latin America.

While the Ethernet switch market is experiencing steep decline in the Western European region and a slight decline in North America, IDC emphasized that the worldwide router market increased 5.6 percent quarter-over-quarter, even though it declined 0.2 percent year-over-year in Q4 2012.

IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Ethernet Switch and Router Tracker provides total market size and vendor shares for the Ethernet switch and router technologies in an easy-to-use pivot table format.

Rohit Mehra, vice president of network infrastructure at IDC, commented, “While growth in the Ethernet switch market will largely come from 10GbE and 40GbE in the coming years, it is encouraging to note that the market for Gigabit Ethernet is holding its own, largely in campus, aggregation, and network edge deployments. While enterprise mobility is no doubt the focus for IT and network managers, the underlying wired infrastructure is also continuing to get mindshare in the context of a holistic approach to the network in delivering applications to end-users.”

IDC’s Q4 2012 results showed sequential growth returning to the enterprise network infrastructure market after experiencing dull performance in the last quarter. The variations in market share notwithstanding, the enterprise network infrastructure will be relevant as long as there is proliferation of video traffic on the network, and the need to support a growing and diverse set of wired and wireless devices at the network edge among operators and providers.

IDC also asserted that the top five worldwide Ethernet switch vendors both in 2011 Q4 and 2012 Q4 in terms of revenue share are Cisco, HP, Alcatel-Lucent (News - Alert), Huawei and Juniper.