Optical transport revenues exceed second-quarter growth expectations

A new Dell’Oro report reveals that supply improvements drove growth during the quarter.

Driven by supply improvements, a new Dell'Oro report found that optical transport equipment revenue grew five percent year-over-year in the second quarter. The research firm said this was the third consecutive quarter that the optical market growth rate topped estimates.

The optical transport market revenue grew five percent year-over-year in the second quarter to over $4 billion. Dell’Oro said better-than-expected revenue was due to higher DWDM Long Haul and Multiservice Multiplexer revenue.

Huawei, Ciena, Nokia, ZTE, Infinera, and FiberHome were the most significant global WDM suppliers in the trailing four-quarter period. Within this group, Nokia and FiberHome gained the most market share compared to the previous year period. FiberHome’s optical revenue grew at the highest rate among the vendors at over 30 percent year-over-year.

“It was another great quarter for optical system vendors,” said Jimmy Yu, VP at Dell’Oro Group. “Ever since component supply eased up, system manufacturers have been able to deliver more products to their customers that sat in the backlog. As a result, optical revenues have increased faster than expected.”

He cautioned that the ongoing inventory digestion will be an issue through the rest of 2023.

“With that said, some customers are signaling a need for a little pause after receiving these deliveries,” Yu said. “Therefore, even though the results in the first half of 2023 were higher than expected, we are holding the full year 2023 outlook at 4 percent, believing year-over-year growth will slow in the back half of the year.”

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About the Author

Sean Buckley

Sean Buckley

Sean is the Editor-in-Chief of Lightwave. He establishes and executes Lightwave's editorial strategy across its website, email newsletters, events, and other information products. Before coming to Lightwave in July 2023, he served as editor of Broadband Communities. Earlier, he served as senior editor of FierceTelecom and the editor of the former Telecommunications Magazine. He got his start in the optical industry in 1998 when he became the editor of enterprise and optical networks at Information Gatekeepers. He has a BA in English from the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and lives in Dracut, Mass, with his wife, two sons, and his cat, Dove. 

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