9/22/2009 -- If market watcher In-Stat is to be believed, the ongoing economic crunch has actually benefitted some vendors -- at the expense, of course, of established powers-that-be, such as Cisco Systems Inc.

Take the Ethernet switching market, where -- thanks both to economic uncertainty and a cost-cutting frenzy among buyers -- a trio of vendors have managed to actually grow their shares: D-Link Corp., 3Com (or, more precisely, its Chinese subsidiary, H3C) and Linksys.

All three vendors posted gains in very different markets, with D-Link growing its share in the "smart" (or quasi-managed) switching segment, 3Com (thanks chiefly to HC3) posting sizeable gains in the People's Republic of China, and Linksys -- a Cisco subsidiary -- growing its presence in the smart, fully-managed and unmanaged switching segments.

These players managed to buck what has otherwise been a downward trend, particularly in the domestic Ethernet switching segment. "Slowing was most apparent for vendors relying heavily on the domestic market and expensive, high-end product lines," said In-Stat analyst Scott Scherer in a prepared release.

Linksys' growth is good news, of a sort, for Cisco, but it's possible that at least some of that growth came at the expense of Cisco's Catalyst switching line.

"Smart product lines gained market share due to declines in unmanaged and fully-managed product lines," Scherer said. For example, Cisco lost about 3 points of market share in the fully managed Ethernet switching segment. Linksys, by contrast, grew its share in the same space.

Elsewhere, Linksys posted big gains in the unmanaged ports segment where it has traditionally been a leader, outpacing D-Link, HP ProCurve and 3Com. --Stephen Swoyer