Optical transport equipment market declines 4 percent in 1Q03 according to Dell'Oro Group

Fiber Optics Weekly Update, May 30, 2003

According to Dell'Oro Group, the optical transport equipment market declined 4 percent in 1Q03 to $1.5 billion. "This is a modest decline compared to the Q/Q decline last year," said Jimmy Yu, an analyst with Dell'Oro Group. "Last year, in 1Q02, the optical transport equipment market declined 18 percent.

The strongest contributor to the smaller decline in 1Q03 was an unexpected sequential growth in sales of optical transport equipment into Japan, where optical networks have been deployed to support the growth in ADSL, FTTH, and mobile phone use. We estimate that optical sales into Japan more than doubled Q/Q as Japanese companies ended their fiscal year." The market leaders in optical transport based or revenue are Nortel, NEC, Lucent, and Alcatel.