New Delhi, Apr 5 (IANS): India networking market witnessed a 33.8 per cent year-over-year (YoY) growth in the fourth quarter of 2018, with Cisco dominating all three segments of the networking market, the International Data Corp said on Friday.

The three segments -- Ethernet Switch, Routers and WLAN -- saw increased investments across the enterprise and service provider deployments.

The Ethernet Switch market in India stood at $148.1 million (by vendor revenue), registering a strong growth (YoY) of 24.2 per cent. Cisco continued to dominate the Ethernet Switch market with a 60.7 per cent share, followed by Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and Huawei.

The India Router market in Q4 stood at $141.5 million, with a sharp YoY growth of 43.4 per cent. Cisco again led the router market with 69.5 per cent market share, followed by Nokia and Huawei.

"Networking is the backbone for any of the IT transformation initiatives. Software-defined networking would be of absolute necessity for faster time to market and optimizing the network recourses," said Dileep Nadimpalli, Research Manager, Storage, IDC India.

The WLAN market in India reached $57 million, with a strong YoY growth of 38.5 per cent. Cisco retained the top spot with a 20.5 per cent market share, followed by HPE and TP-Link.

"Increased uptake of Hybrid Cloud, multi-Cloud, mobility and IoT, etc are demanding more networking resources and making day-to-day network operations complex.

"Organisations are opting for next-generation networking solutions to address automation and orchestration needs arising due to complex network environments," added Ranganath Sadasiva, Director, Enterprise Solutions, IDC India.

All the three segments of the networking market are expected to grow in single digits in terms of compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for 2018-23, forecast IDC.