“Since the onset of the pandemic, and based on our research as well as our end-user interviews, we have been predicting the data center switch market to be somewhat resilient to the pandemic and to decline only mid-to-low single-digit in 2020,” said Sameh Boujelbene, Senior Research Director at Dell’Oro Group.

“In 4Q 2020, the market decline was attributed to several cases of inventory correction,” said Baron Fung, Research Director at Dell’Oro Group. “First, the market’s sequential decline was attributed to a large non-reoccuring purchase by Huawei in the prior quarter ahead of the US-imposed sanctions…

“While government spending is flowing into all vertical industries, it is most notable in K-12 Education and Government,” said Matthias Machowinski, Senior Research Director at Dell’Oro Group. “We estimate those two verticals alone contributed an additional 15 percent to overall market spend during 4Q 2020, as sales to K-12 increased 90 percent and Government increased almost 40 percent—extraordinary rates. Clearly, government spending is lifting overall market sales and by our judgment, is likely to continue through 2021 and beyond,” added Machowinski.

“Government stimulus around the world, which propelled market recovery in 3Q 2020, continued in the fourth quarter of 2020,” said Sameh Boujelbene, Senior Director at Dell’Oro Group. “However, 4Q 2020 did not benefit from pent-up demand from large enterprises as much as the prior quarter did. On a more positive note, we started to see some sign of recovery in the mid-market,” added Boujelbene.