From occupying a small percent of the global transceiver market in 2012, Chinese manufacturers of optical components and modules have come to dominate optical transceiver sales, LightCounting asserts in its newly released Vendors and Markets for Optics in China report. In fact, market segments such as FTTx and wireless fronthaul are almost fully owned by Chinese suppliers, the market research firm asserts.
The figure above illustrates how the market share Chinese companies control has grown in the case of Ethernet optical modules. The success of the Chinese suppliers has forced several Western companies to leave the market, LightCounting points out.
Chinese transceiver vendors initially relied on strong demand within their home country. However, the success of companies such as Innolight and more recently Eoptolink with U.S.-based cloud companies indicates that Chinese vendors have started to become more global players.
That said, all is not lost for Western optical transceiver vendors. Such suppliers continue to do well in high-end areas such as pluggable high-speed DWDM transceivers. How long such dominance will continue is uncertain. For example, LightCounting forecasts that at least some Chinese companies will enter this space. On the other, Huawei may find that U.S. government restrictions on sales of advanced ICs and IC manufacturing technologies to the company and its suppliers may limit Huawei’s ability to supply 400G pluggable DWDM modules. It may take the company 2-3 years to overcome such hurdles, LightCounting says.
More information on the report is available on LightCounting’s website.
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