ElectroniCast Consultants says the worldwide use of fiber-optic circulators in optical communications will reach $244.5 million in 2014, an increase of 10.7% over the total consumption value of $227.4 million in 2013.
The market research firm says that the consumption value is forecast to continue to increase at an average annual growth rate of 6.9% during the forecast period 2013 – 2018. The value is expected to increase despite the fact that quantity growth will be partially offset by declining average prices.
ElectroniCast has segmented the fiber-optic circulator market according to the port count of the various devices. Configurations represented in the report are three ports, four ports, and more than four ports. Devices with three ports held an 80% market share in 2013, and over 70% of the market value for those three-port fiber-optic circulators in 2013 was in telecommunication applications, the report found.
Telecommunications is set to maintain its dominant market share lead throughout the forecast period, the analysts say. Specialty applications such as research and development, sensors, test equipment, oil/gas, and “other” make up the majority of other uses, according to ElectroniCast’s analysis.
The drivers for the steady increase in consumption of fiber-optic circulators are deployment of optical fiber in the metro/access, the continuing demand for upgrading networks to accommodate rapidly increasing bandwidth requirements, plus the need for additional monitoring and testing of fiber-optic networks, the report says.
As terrestrial national backbone and undersea systems approaching terabit capacities, components like fiber-optic circulators are key in enabling DWDM systems with narrow channel spacing to achieve the large numbers of channels required. Fiber-optic circulators are also used with erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs), optical add/drop multiplexers (OADMs), optical time-domain reflectometer (OTDR) test equipment, dispersion compensators, and in sensor applications, for example.
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