IDC: Global security appliance market shows good growth

The total global security appliance market showed “positive growth” in both vendor revenue and unit shipments for the first quarter of 2016, marking the eleventh consecutive quarter of year-over-year growth.

According to analyst IDC, worldwide vendor revenues in the first quarter increased 5.5 percent year-over-year to $2.47 billion, while shipments grew 9 percent to a total of 580,000 units.

The unified threat management (UTM) category has doubled in size over the last five years and continues to be the “major driver” for the overall market, said the analyst. For the first quarter of 2016, the UTM market generated $1.25 billion in revenues, for year-over-year growth of 16.9 percent.

The only other category with positive growth was intrusion detection and prevention (IDP), with revenues of $372 million and 3.8 percent annual growth.

The firewall, content management and virtual private network (VPN) categories experienced a “slow start” to the year, said IDC, with year-over-year revenue declines of 4.2 percent, 6.7 percent and 24.2 percent, respectively.

The US represented 43 percent of the total security appliance market revenue globally and it experienced year-over-year growth of 7.3 percent in 1Q16. Western Europe is the second largest region with 21 percent of total worldwide revenues and year-over-year revenue growth of 4.3 percent.

The top five vendors by sales and market share in order were Cisco, Check Point, Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet and Blue Coat.

“There has been a sharper decline than expected in many of the markets as the global economy is having an effect on the security market and shaping the growth rate to be lower than expected,” said Elizabeth Corr, an analyst at IDC.

@AntonySavvas