New Delhi, Dec 26 (IANS): Cisco continues to lead the India networking market which witnessed 67.1 per cent year-over-year growth in the third quarter of this year, the International Data Corporation (IDC) said on Wednesday.

Government and enterprise digitalisation initiatives are expected to drive future growth in the India networking market which includes Ethernet switch, routers and wireless local area network (WLAN) segments, according to IDC.

"Mobile workforce, anytime anywhere access to enterprise networks, security across multiple channels and shift towards cloud-based application workload are key drivers for investment in network infrastructure," Dileep Nadimpalli, Research Manager, Storage, IDC India said in a statement.

In the third quarter of 2018, the Ethernet switch market in India stood at $160.3 million with an year-over-year (YoY) growth of 34.4 per cent, according to IDC's latest "Asia/Pacific Quarterly Ethernet Switch Tracker".

Cisco continues to dominate the Ethernet switch market with a 65.7 per cent share in Q3 2018, followed by HPE and Huawei, the report said.

The India router market in Q3 2018 stood at $214.9 million with an YoY growth of 140.4 per cent, IDC said.

Cisco accounted to three-fourth of the router market in Q3 2018. Nokia and Huawei witnessed high double-digit YoY growth on the back of a few big-ticket wins in the telecom space, according to IDC's latest "Asia/Pacific Quarterly Router Tracker" report.

The WLAN market in India stood at $54 million in Q3 2018 with a healthy YoY growth of 12 per cent.

Cisco retained the top spot in the WLAN market with a 24.8 per cent market share in Q3 2018, followed by TP-Link and HPE, IDC said.

"Software defined networking solutions are expected to gain prominence as the enterprise infrastructure evolves from siloed, human-dependent systems to self-servicing, fully automated and seamless integrated systems," said Ranganath Sadasiva, Director-Enterprise, IDC India.