New Delhi, Mar 26 (IANS): Indias networking market which includes ethernet switch, routers, and WLAN segments witnessed a 22.5 per cent year-over-year (YoY) decline in Q4 of 2019, a new IDC report said on Thursday.

The decline was majorly contributed by the router segment due to huge one-time investments that happened during Q4, said IDC.

A slowdown in the telecommunications spending due to the AGR dues also played a major role in the decline of the overall networking market.

"The enterprise emphasis on digital transformation has been purely driven by the end-users' need to have a seamless experience.

"Networks are at the forefront of this digital transformation enabling a tremendous amount of data being transferred between the edge, data center, and cloud. Technologies like W-Fi 6 and 5G will enable faster data transfers thereby enabling organizations to make quicker business decisions," Sudharsan Raghunathan, Senior Market Analyst, IDC India, said in a statement.

Cisco continued to dominate the Ethernet Switch market with a 49.9 per cent cent share, followed by Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and Huawei.

Other categories like switching and WLAN had a YoY decline of 3.7 per cent and 13.1 per cent, respectively.

During Q4, India did not see any shift in buying behaviour because of the COVID-19.

However, it is expected that the pandemic will soften buying behaviour during the first half of 2020, said the report.