Global Ethernet port shipments from 4Q10 to 1Q11 declined 7 percent, while revenues decreased 12 percent, according to In-Stat (News - Alert).

Port shipments grew 2 percent on a year-over-year basis while revenues were down 8 percent. However, there was a growth in the Ethernet switch market in the 10GigE space where year-over-year port shipments increased 21 percent.

“From a market share perspective, Cisco (News - Alert) continues to hold the top spot in Ethernet switching, although they've seen a small drop over the past year,” said Brad Shaffer, analyst at In-Stat, in a statement. “HP Networking, which didn't exist in its current form a year ago, comes in at number two, and D-LINK rounds out the top three.”

Considering regions, Europe fell 2 percent from 35.6 percent to 33.6 percent, North America also dropped, falling from 30.1 percent to 27.3 percent.

From 4Q10 to 1Q11, regional market share shifted significantly. The Asia Pacific region accounted for 31.7 percent of shipments, up from 30.7 percent the previous quarter, In-Stat said in its research called, “1Q11 Ethernet Switch Database: By Region, Form Factor, Wire Speed, OSI Layer, and Vendor.”

Gigabit Ethernet port shipments decreased 6.5 percent and revenues fell 15.6 percent.

The In-Stat research provides detailed segmentation of the worldwide Ethernet switch market for the current and seven preceding quarters, breaking down port shipments and manufacturers' revenues by all the important categories.

Recently, Infonetics (News - Alert) Research said the carrier Ethernet switch and IP router market grew by 20.5 percent to $12.8 billion last year from 2009, led by North America. Overall, the carrier router and switch market increased 21 percent year over year from third quarter 2009 to third quarter 2010.