Cisco leads slowing network security appliance market

Jan. 3, 2013
Despite slowdown, organizations still striving to keep infrastructure secure and data protected, report says

Cisco remains the top-ranked provider of security appliances (as calculated by total worldwide revenue), according to a new report from International Data Corporation (IDC). Check Point, Juniper, Fortinet and McAfee round out the top five; however, the research firm reports an overall slowing in the market. 

"Overall, macroeconomic conditions have been questionable at best. While the security market remains more resilient than others, there was a definite slow-down in growth rates in the third quarter,"  John Grady, research manager, Security Products at IDC, said in a press release. "That being said, the evolving threat landscape continues to drive spending on security products as organizations battle to keep their infrastructures secure and their data protected."

Geographically, revenue grew fastest in Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) with a 13.3% year-over-year increase. Western Europe continued to see sluggish growth, increasing just 0.5% year over year. Japan had the highest unit growth year over year of 8.3%, followed closely by combined Central and Eastern Europe and Middle East, and Africa at 7.9%. The United States recorded 4.6% revenue growth on a unit decrease of 1.2% versus 3Q11, indicating some softness in lower price bands and that revenue growth was driven by larger enterprises and service providers.

The combined shares of the top five global vendors above represented 48.5% of the market in 3Q12. Cisco had a 16.2% share in factory revenue for the third quarter, but this was down from 17.3% in the prior year period. Check Point held the number 2 spot with 12.8% share for the quarter as revenue increased 12.8% compared to the third quarter of 2011. Fortinet saw the largest growth among the top five vendors at 17.2%.

Vendors outside the top five included strong quarters from Palo Alto Networks and Sourcefire.

The full report is here: http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS23894413#.UOWiBORm7aI