Cisco sees new competition from Huawei in router race: Cisco may continue to enjoy the number-one spot in the router and switching market, but according to Infonetics' second-quarter 2013 "Service Provider Routers and Switches" report, it is facing strong competitors like Huawei which gained 4 market share points in in Q2 2013 to take the number two spot. During the past two years, Huawei has gained 5.6 share points in the edge and core router market. Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU), Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO), Huawei and Juniper Networks (NYSE: JNPR) together account for about 90 percent of total router (edge and core) revenue in 2Q13. On a global basis, service provider router and switch revenue rose 27 percent year-over-year to $4 billion, a factor Infonetics says is the result of service providers being "ready to spend after holding back in the previous quarter." From a segment perspective, IP edge revenue grew 30 percent sequentially due to the movement to 100GE on routers and 100G in optical transport. Alternatively, core routers saw the slowest quarter over quarter growth. Michael Howard, principal analyst for carrier networks and co-founder of Infonetics Research, said that all of the major geographic regions reported growth during the second quarter. "The 2nd quarter is usually up for carrier routers and switches, but this one is exceptional given the sluggishness of the past few years," he said. "Every major geographical region except Japan notched double-digit sequential growth and, more important, gained from the year-ago quarter." Release
Germans love their Internet: Internet use in Germany continues to rise, according to Media Use 2013 study by Seven-One Media and Mindline. Daily Internet usage rose to 115 minutes, while radio listening has fallen to 137 minutes a day since last year. Study respondents said that other media such as TV, newspapers and radio drove them to conduct research on the Internet. Out of these three elements, 44 percent cited TV, 32 percent cited magazines, 26 percent newspapers, 24 percent the radio and 19 percent movie theaters. One-quarter of the study's respondents said the TV had prompted to buy something online, and 35 percent of respondents said they used the internet generally to look up products, services and brands. Article (sub req.)
Akamai takes charge of cloud-based video delivery market: Akamai has taken a dominant spot in the cloud video service market, says a new ABI Research study, increasing its market share from 27 percent to almost 30 percent this year. Other companies that compete in the market trail Akamai with less than 5 percent market share. During the first half of this year, the company had $322 million in revenues within a market expected to be worth $2.36 billion by the end of the year. However, Akamai's dominant position could be challenged as the industry continues to consolidate. "The CDN and related markets are poised for a round of consolidation," comments Sam Rosen, practice director at ABI Research. "We expect horizontal consolidation--where rival CDNs combine to gain scale in their competition with Akamai--as well as vertical consolidation--where CDNs bring in functions, especially from OVPs, to compete for the largest content producers." Release