The worldwide Ethernet switch market reached $14.7 billion in revenue in the third quarter of 2025 (3Q25), a 35.2 percent year-over-year (YoY) increase, driven by hyperscalers and cloud service providers building infrastructure for AI workloads.
Meanwhile, the total worldwide enterprise and service provider (SP) router market grew 15.8 percent to $3.6 billion, IDC report said.
Datacenter Ethernet Switch Market Leads Growth
The datacenter (DC) segment of the Ethernet switch market surged 62 percent and 18.2 percent quarter-over-quarter (QoQ), fueled by high-bandwidth, low-latency deployments for AI workloads.
Revenues from 800GbE switches rose 91.6 percent sequentially, representing 18.3 percent of DC segment revenue, while 200/400GbE switches increased 97.8 percent, making up 43.9 percent of the DC market. ODM Direct sales also grew strongly, rising 152.4 percent to 30.2 percent of DC revenues.
The non-datacenter segment, covering enterprise campus and branch networks, rose 8.2 percent. Within this segment, 1GbE switches grew 1.2 percent, 10GbE switches increased 14.3 percent, and 25/50GbE switches rose 20.9 percent.
Regional Market Performance
The Americas saw a 41.6 percent growth, driven by a 66.1 percent rise in the U.S. DC market. EMEA grew 24.7 percent, and the Asia Pacific region increased 32.7 percent.
Brandon Butler, senior research manager at IDC, noted, “AI adoption is fueling strong expansion in the Ethernet switch market, particularly in datacenters, while non-DC switches continue to grow as enterprises enhance campus and branch networks using AI-powered management and automation tools.”
Router Market Highlights
Service providers, including communications and cloud SPs, accounted for 74 percent of the total router market and grew 20.2 percent. The enterprise router segment rose 4.7 percent. Regionally, router markets increased 31.5 percent in the Americas, 7.7 percent in APJ, and 3.5 percent in EMEA.
Top Vendors
Cisco’s Ethernet switch revenue rose 8.9 percent to $4.4 billion (29.8 percent market share); DC segment up 16.9 percent. Router revenue up 31.9 percent (37.5 percent market share).
Arista Networks’s Ethernet switch revenue $1.9 billion, up 29.1 percent; 12.8 percent total market share and 19.2 percent in DC segment.
NVIDIA’s DC-only Ethernet switch revenue rose 167.7 percent to $1.0 billion, holding 11.6 percent of the DC market.
Huawei’s Ethernet switch revenue was $1.2 billion, up 15.2 percent (8.2 percent market share); router revenue grew 1.1 percent (23.2 percent share).
HPE’s Ethernet switch revenue increased 24.7 percent, grabbing 12.5 percent market share, including Juniper contributions. HPE’s non-DC segment revenue was 70.9 percent of total switch revenue.
Outlook
As AI-driven workloads continue to expand, demand for high-speed, low-latency Ethernet switches and routers is expected to accelerate, supporting enterprise, hyperscaler, and cloud infrastructure growth worldwide.
Rajani Baburajan
