CIR sees Optical Ethernet Transceiver Market surpassing one billion revenue mark in 2006

Fiber Optics Weekly Update, June 7, 2002

Communications Industry Researchers Inc. (CIR) announced the release of its report titled, Optical Ethernet Transceiver Market Opportunities, which states that the market for this technology will generate a worldwide revenue potential of over $1 billion in 2006. This report is one of a new product line - CIR Optical Components Executive Series - that covers key segments of the optical components industry. Other reports currently planned in this series include: Amplifiers, Optical Add/Drop Multiplexers, Metro Components, Optical Filters, Transceivers and Integrated Optical Products.

On a positive note, CIR foresees strong and stable growth in the 1.25 Gbps Optical Ethernet transceiver category over the forecasting period with the market expected to grow from approximately $460 million in 2002 to over $960 million in 2006. However, given the lack of acceptance of Optical Ethernet within established service providers and the failure of companies such as Yipes combined with the poor financial outlooks for other Ethernet providers such as Telseon, the report states that Ethernet's advance into the public network will be a slow one. As such, CIR's projections for the access and metro portions of the public network over the next five years are small compared to opportunities for sales for use in enterprise networking and uplink ports, which is where vendors should expect to see the most interest in their products.

The study provides hard-hitting insights into the opportunities for transceiver suppliers such as Agilent, Finisar, Stratos Lightwave, IBM (now JDSU), Molex, Tyco, Luminent and Infineon that are based upon interviews with their customers. Within the report, CIR picks the companies most likely to succeed or fail in the upcoming shake up that the firm predicts will occur over the next 18 months. Also detailed are five-year forecasts for Optical Ethernet transceivers broken out by type and speed, as well estimates of pricing for Ethernet Transceivers from 2002 through 2006. In addition, insights into winning strategies for suppliers of Optical Ethernet transceivers are given. For more information about this report or the CIR Optical Components Executive Series, please visit CIR's Web site, http://www.cir-inc.com or contact Rick McCormack via email at rick.mccormack@cir-inc.com.