Dell'Oro: 2012 optical transport equipment market shrinking

Sales of optical network hardware in the first half of 2012 declined 5% versus the same period in 2011, according to a newly published report by Dell’Oro Group.

The optical network hardware market saw sales levels of $6.1 billion during the first half of last year, according to the market research firm.

“The optical market contracted in the first half of 2012 due to lower spending in the mature markets of North America and EMEA,” said Jimmy Yu, vice president of optical transport research at Dell’Oro Group. “The emerging regions of Asia Pacific and Latin America, however, did grow as service providers in the regions continued to expand network capacity.”

North American spending decreased 12% versus last year, while sales in the EMEA region declined 16%, the report reveals. While revenues have grown by 7% in Asia Pacific and 11% in the rest of the world (principally Latin America) compared to the first half of last year, the overall effect has been a 5% decline.

As Infonetics Research stated earlier (see “Infonetics: Optical network systems revenue jumps 15% in 2Q12”), sales of WDM equipment and packet-optical systems bucked the downward trend. The former niche grew 5% in the first half of the year, while sales from the latter composed a third of total optical market revenues during the period.

Overall equipment spending trends favored Huawei, which captured approximately 20% share of the worldwide optical network equipment market in first half 2012, Dell’Oro states.