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Breaking News - Networking:

EMEA Data Networking Market To Model Worldwide Performance

In 2003, the data networking equipment market accounted for $6.4 billion in the geographic region of Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), with an expected stagnation in revenues throughout the five-year forecast period, reports In-Stat/MDR. The high-tech market research firm found that, in the more mature segments of LAN Switches and Business Routers, EMEA accounted for at least 30 percent of worldwide revenues in 2003. However, in the case of more emerging technologies, such as Wi-Fi and Security, EMEA accounted for significantly less in 2003. However, in the case of Wi-Fi business hardware, EMEA's share is expected to increase to 24 percent of annual WLAN revenues by 2007. On the security side, EMEA is expected to come on very strong, grabbing 34 percent of worldwide annual security revenues by 2007.

"Worldwide, the overall data networking market is not expected to increase significantly in terms of revenue through 2007, but to remain relatively stable. In 2004, worldwide data networking revenues are expected to jump to $25 billion from annual revenues of $22 billion in 2003. However, annual worldwide revenues are expected to remain relatively flat from 2004 through 2007," says Gemma Paulo, a senior analyst with In-Stat/MDR. "EMEA is expected to model worldwide performance on the data networking side, although more growth is expected a bit later in the forecast, as EMEA ramps up on WLAN, Security and other more high-priced switches at a rate lagging that of the U.S."

Annual unit shipments to EMEA are expected to grow in each data networking category, but the rapid price erosion for LAN data networking equipment is expected to continually shrink revenues.

In-Stat/MDR has also found that:

• As with the worldwide data networking market, LAN Switches comprised the largest portion of the EMEA data networking equipment market in 2003, accounting for $4.0 billion in end-use revenues. Business Routers contributed $1.5 billion of end-use revenues.
• In 2003, WLAN carved out a small piece of the EMEA networking equipment revenue pie, accounting for $330 million, and the emerging Security segment contributed approximately $600 million.
• EMEA market leaders on the enterprise data networking side include Cisco, 3Com, HP, Avaya and Enterasys. Although the majority of networking revenues come from the United Kingdom, Germany, France and the Nordics, other burgeoning countries include Russia, the Czech Republic, Poland and South Africa. Data networking companies are hitting these emerging countries hard to try to stir up new customers.