Infonetics: Optical hardware market holds steady at $2.7B in 3Q05

December 2, 2005 San Jose, CA -- According to a report from Infonetics Research, the worldwide optical network hardware market had a flat third quarter, holding at $2.7 billion, but is expected to finish up 16% for the year.

According to the firm, the market will hold steady over the next 12 months and then pick up, with annual revenue growing to $11.6 billion by 2008, driven by strengthening metro and long haul equipment sales.

"Service providers have been pushing their networks to use more capacity with minimal equipment purchases," comments Michael Howard, principal analyst at Infonetics Research. "Although it's different for each carrier and different for each of their networks, we are observing that Ethernet is a prime driver as carriers stop buying and enhancing current generation and older network equipment, and start buying next generation equipment."

3Q05 market highlights, according to the report, include:

* Alcatel leads in worldwide optical network hardware revenue market share, followed by Nortel, Huawei, and Lucent.

* Metro makes up 69% of all optical network hardware revenue; long haul continues to make up a smaller portion (31%).

* North America accounts for 34% of total optical network hardware revenue, EMEA for 32%, Asia Pacific 28%, and CALA 6%

* Fujitsu leads the worldwide SONET market, followed by Tellabs and Lucent.

* Alcatel leads the worldwide SDH market, followed by Huawei and Nortel

The quarterly "Optical Network Hardware" report tracks metro and long haul SONET/SDH, WDM transport, and WDM switch (broken out by ROADM and non-ROADM) hardware. Forecasts and regional market share are updated quarterly and cover all global regions.