New Q3 data from Synergy Research Group shows that Cisco’s share of the worldwide service provider router market increased by 1.4 percentage points over the previous quarter. Thanks to a strong market share gain in the APAC region and continued growth in EMEA, Cisco returns to near the levels it achieved throughout 2014. The US was a different story where Juniper saw strong market share gains for the third consecutive quarter, which came mainly at the expense of Cisco. Notably Juniper returned to the second-ranked position in the worldwide market share table, ahead of Alcatel-Lucent and Huawei though still a long way behind Cisco which remains the dominant market leader.

Worldwide Q3 service provider router revenues were $3.3 billion, down 3% from Q3 2014. On a rolling annual basis the market grew by 1%. Core routers accounted for 21% of Q3 revenues, while edge routers accounted for 62% and Ethernet access-aggregation devices 17%. North America remained the biggest region accounting for 36% of worldwide revenues, followed by APAC, EMEA and Latin America. On a rolling annualized basis EMEA has experienced by far the strongest market growth, having grown 9%.

“Relative to the previous quarter Cisco was able to aggressively grow revenues in both the APAC and EMEA regions, countering some weakness in North America,” said John Dinsdale, a Chief Analyst and Research Director at Synergy Research Group. “Among the three main vendors in the pack chasing Cisco, Juniper’s rise in the US is clearly the biggest story. Its US market share has not been this high in over four years.” said Jeremy Duke, Synergy Research Group’s founder. “As we enter a period of major industry consolidation and increasing geopolitical and economic concerns, both vendors can draw some satisfaction from their current performance,” he added.