New Delhi, Jun 30 (IANS): India's enterprise networking market which includes ethernet switch, routers, and WLAN segments witnessed a 6.9 per cent (on-year) growth in the first quarter this year, a new report has shown.

The ethernet switch, router, and WLAN markets are expected to grow in single digits in terms of compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for 2021-2026, according to the IDC.

IDC also expects large investments for 5G rollouts in the next couple of years.

"The networking market in India (in terms of vendor revenue) is expected to have a gradual and steady growth for quarters to come. However, the growth cannot be directly construed as an increase in demand," said Sudharsan Raghunathan, senior market analyst, enterprise networking, IDC India.

The ethernet switch market in India stood at $156.8 million (by vendor revenue).

Cisco continued to lead the ethernet switch market with a 56.3 per cent share, followed by Juniper and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE).

The India router market declined sharply to $61.8 million with a YoY decline of 14.7 per cent.

The Indian WLAN market had a YoY growth of 9.1 per cent at $63.6 million.

"Due to the rising prices of network infrastructure caused by multiple reasons like the weakening rupee against the dollar, increase in transportation/logistics costs, and worsening scenario of component shortages the vendor revenue numbers will continue to grow at a higher pace compared to the units that are being shipped, said Raghunathan.