OCTOBER 5, 2009 -- Global sales of optical transceivers are expected to reach $2.1 billion in 2009, according to the latest market forecast by opto-electronic transceiver market research company LightCounting LLC. While LightCounting said the figure represents a “minor improvement in the market outlook,” it noted that it’s a lot better than the sharp declines in optical transceiver sales reported in late 2008 and early 2009.
LightCounting maintained what it described as a “conservative” 5% growth projection for 2010, considering the uncertainty of timing a sustainable economic recovery. Double-digit growth will likely follow in 2011-2013, as the optical networking industry rushes to meet steadily growing bandwidth demand, according to the company.
Key indicators of the improving market, in LightCounting’s estimation, include:
- Higher than expected transceiver sales by vendors focused on the Asian market, which are likely to post 5-15% increases in annual sales.
- Majority of optical transceiver suppliers reported increasing orders in Q2 2009 and projected 5% to 10% revenue growth for the last two quarters of 2009.
- FTTx deployments continue strong despite the downturn, as carriers race to provide new voice, video, and data service bundles to bandwidth-hungry consumers.
- Bandwidth utilization in optical networking infrastructure remains high.
- Datacenter upgrades are gaining momentum again, as competition among content providers intensifies ahead of the imminent economic recovery.
"Despite reported market improvements, service providers are likely to stay prudent and favor incumbent technologies," commented Dr. Vladimir Kozlov, founder and CEO of LightCounting. "This trend will sustain the SONET/SDH market through 2011-2013, while delays in the adoption of 100GbE interfaces will open the door for 40GbE to become the higher-speed Ethernet of choice for most applications."
This report presents historical data from 2006-2008 and a market forecast through 2013 for SONET/SDH, Ethernet, Fibre Channel, CWDM, DWDM, FTTx transceivers, optical interconnects, and active optical cables, sorted into over 100 product categories. The report includes forecasts for XFP and XFP-E 10-Gbps tunable transceivers as well as QSFP, CFP and CXP, 40-Gbps, and 100-Gbps modules. The 2006-2008 sales data accounts for 30 transceiver vendors, with more than 25 sharing confidential sales data with LightCounting.
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