Cisco resumes reign over Juniper

Cisco System's market share in the lucrative high-end networking equipment market has grown to 26 per cent from 21 per cent, beating rival Juniper Networks in the second quarter of 2001.

A recent study by the Dell'Oro Group revealed that Cisco seized 60.3 per cent of the $535.4m market in Q2, up from 59 per cent in Q1. Juniper's market share dropped to 34.7 per cent from 38 per cent - which was the company's biggest share of the market.

Tony Lock, senior analyst at Bloor Research told silicon.com that taking statistics for one quarter is a "risky business". The results are "a bit misleading, we need to see a bit more of a trend... It is no indication of what is going to happen in the medium term," said Lock.

What will be of interest is to see what will happen over the next two quarters, said the analyst.

Prior to the latest results, Juniper had been making a charge within the high-end routers market, which saw the company start to gradually demolish Cisco's reign over the last few years.

However, the results - which have shown some distance between Cisco and Juniper - have also revealed that sales for the router market have dropped 29 per cent to $535.4m.

Sales were at a high of $835m in the fourth quarter of 2001. Lock told silicon.com Cisco's increase is down to the launch of its high-speed product, which helped it drive market growth.

The arrival of new services such as video-on-demand will boost the market's recovery as service providers spend again, but it still needs the extra bandwidth to offer these new services.