Dell'Oro: WDM equipment market revenues projected to surpass year 2000 peak

The rest of the optical networking space may not be doing very well, but a new report by Dell’Oro Group suggests the total WDM market, comprising both metro and long-haul applications, grew 14 percent year-over-year in 3Q12 and is forecast to reach $8 billion for the full year 2012 – exceeding the telecom high point of 2000.

“It was the year 2000 when the WDM market peaked at $7.7 billion and then promptly burst downwards to $1.8 billion,” said Jimmy Yu, vice president of optical transport research at Dell’Oro Group. “Since then, it’s taken 12 long years to reach this milestone but we are finally on a path to best this previous revenue peak and to attain a new record revenue marker for the WDM market.”

Dell’Oro is forecasting the total WDM market to be $8 billion for the full year 2012 as a larger number of service providers roll out 40 and 100 gigabit DWDM wavelengths to meet the rising demand for bandwidth. The market is expected to climb further in 2013.

Manufacturers Huawei, Ciena, and Alcatel-Lucent dominated the market in 3Q 2012, says the analyst firm. Fujitsu and NEC picked up the number four and five spots.

Dell’Oro’s statements regarding the health of WDM sales initially would appear to run counter to the assertions of other market research firms, such as Ovum and Infonetics, that the optical network hardware market is suffering (see, for example, “Optical hardware sales shrink y-o-y for third straight quarter, says Ovum” and “SONET/SDH sales shrinkage weighs down optical hardware sales in 3Q12 says Infonetics”). However, both of Dell’Oro’s competitors also have remarked on the uptick in WDM sales; it is the collapse of SONET/SDH equipment revenues that has dragged down the overall market.

Dell’Oro says its Optical Transport Quarterly Report offers in-depth coverage of the market with tables covering manufacturers’ revenue, average selling prices, unit shipments (by speed up to 100 Gbps). The report tracks DWDM long-haul terrestrial, WDM metro, multiservice multiplexers (SONET/SDH), optical switch, and packet optical transport platforms.

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