A content delivery network (CDN) refers to a geographically distributed group of servers that work together to provide fast media delivery of Internet content. Content delivery networks are essential for streaming of data, such as video streaming apps like Netflix, music streaming apps like Spotify, online gaming apps like Fortnite, and even delivery of content like newsfeeds. As more information gets delivered digitally, content delivery and CDN solutions will become more critical. A CDN allows for the quick transfer of assets needed for loading Internet content, including HTML pages, javascript files, stylesheets, images, and videos.Before CDN services existed, a user in France, for example, would get their data feed straight from a company's web server, perhaps in the US. A global Content delivery network allows internet users in France to download their data from a server in France, decreasing download times for global content. The traditional CDN service providers involve a large set of servers, which are strategically deployed across the globe and balance the load on the existing networks. The goal of CDNs is to provide high availability and high performance by distributing the service spatially relative to end-users. The key CDN market players are Akamai, Fastly, and Verizon. You can find CDN Market Size, CDN Market Share, and other CDN Industry trends and statistics below.
The chart shows the CDN Market Size over a forecast period from 2017 to 2024. In 2020, the CDN Market Size of the CDN Industry was $13.9B and is projected to grow 12% in 2021. The Asia-Pacific region is expected to see the fastest growth rate during the next 5 years owing to the explosive growth in Internet and smart-phone users.
The chart shows the global CDN Market Share for web-based apps in 2016. The CDN Market Share leaders are Akamai with a 35% CDN market share, followed by Fastly with 13% market share, Verizon EdgeCast with 12% share, AWS CloudFront with 10% share, Self Service CDNs with 12%, Cloudflare with 5%, Alibaba and Sohu with 4% each, and Rackspace and Baidu with 1% each. Of these, Akamai is recognized as the dominant profit leader, however, Amazon Cloudfront is gaining more numbers of customers. View the source for this CDN Market Share chart and other CDN Market statistics and trends here.
The market growth for the Content Delivery Network - CDN Industry is attributed to the growing volumes of content exchanged over the internet, the expanding speed of internet and cellular networks, the increasing consumption of data on smartphones, and the general trends of cloud adoption and cloud computing. The rising use of web-based, high-definition video content, and the consumer shift to mobile content and multi-platform viewing has created a tremendous market opportunity for CDN providers and the rise of many different CDN solutions. These service providers help ensure uninterrupted content delivery over a high-speed data network, particularly to cater to the rising demand for Video-on-Demand (VOD) and Over the Top (OTT) services. The crowding competitive landscape has put pressure on prices. However, this is offset by many companies increasingly choosing multiple CDN vendors for their content distribution network. The rollout of 5G will help ensure fast growth for the Content Delivery Network Market and the CDN Industry.
Market research sources moderately disagree on the CDN Market Size, moderately disagree on the CDN Market Share, and agree on the potential for strong CDN growth. The reason for this agreement across research firms about the CDN Market is because statistics on CDN usage and data networks are readily available from research firms and media tracking websites. For a complete evaluation of the CDN market, T4 recommends exploring all available sources. T4 aggregated and organized the data from these sources on the T4 Industry Research Platform. See Each source's view of the CDN Market, CDN Market Size, and CDN Market Share on the T4 Platform.
T4 comprehensively aggregated more than 20 reports from more than 5 publishers covering statistics and trends in the Content Delivery Network Market - CDN Industry. This includes CDN Sales numbers by Content Management System, CDN Market Share, CDN Revenue by Region, by Business Application, Type of Service, Type of Solution, Data volume of CDN traffic, and more than 5 additional statistics. The Industry falls under T4's Cybersecurity industry coverage. Related categories of CDN include Cloud Security, Edge Computing, Load Balancing, DDoS Protection, Content Delivery Network Security, Network Security, Data Center, Networking, Mobile Data, and Storage. You can find reports covering these industries on T4’s Platform.
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