Infonetics Research: Spectacular year for optical network hardware market

Market Wire, February, 2008

Sales of optical network hardware are up for the 4th consecutive year, nearing $13.9 billion worldwide in 2007, a 19% jump from 2006, says Infonetics Research in its latest "Optical Network Hardware" report.

The market is up for the quarter as well, increasing 12% sequentially in 4Q07, led by Alcatel-Lucent, Huawei, Nortel, and Nokia Siemens, respectively, the report shows. All four market leaders posted growth in the 4th quarter.

"2007 marks the highest revenue year for the optical network hardware market since 2001. Increases in all kinds of consumer and business voice, video, data, and mobile traffic continue to drive service providers to launch IP transformation projects and invest in optical networking gear. The burgeoning packet optical transport systems market, driven by these IP transformation projects, is already close to a one billion dollar annual market in 2007," said Michael Howard, principal analyst at Infonetics Research.

Other highlights from the report:

--  The worldwide optical network hardware market is forecast to grow to
    $15.4 billion in 2011
--  Spending continues to shift from SONET/SDH to WDM: worldwide SONET/SDH
    equipment sales were up 9%, WDM sales were up 39% in 2007
--  The 40G market will continue to grow at least through 2011, and
    possibly 2012-2013, before reasonably priced 100G and 100GE products
    overtake 40G
--  WDM ROADM sales doubled in 2007 from 2006
--  In 2007, 36% of all optical network hardware revenue came from EMEA,
    34% from North America, 25% Asia Pacific, and 6% CALA
    

Infonetics' report provides market share, market size, and forecasts for metro and long haul optical equipment, broken out by SONET/SDH (with transport and switch splits) vs. WDM (with ROADM and DWDM and CWDM transport splits). The report now tracks packet optical transport systems as well. Forecasts and regional market share are updated quarterly and cover all regions.

The report tracks ADTRAN, ADVA Optical, Alcatel-Lucent, Ciena, Cisco, Corrigent, ECI, Ericsson, Fujitsu, Huawei, Infinera, Meriton, NEC, Nokia Siemens Networks, Nortel, OpVista, Sycamore, Tellabs, Transmode, Turin, Zhone, ZTE, and others.

Download report highlights by logging in to Infonetics' online portal from www.infonetics.com (see Optical Networks area). For sales, contact Larry Howard, vice president, at larry@infonetics.com or 1 (408) 583-3335.

Infonetics Research ( www.infonetics.com ) is an international market research and consulting firm specializing in telecom and data networking. Services include quarterly market share and forecasting, end-user survey research, service provider survey research, and service provider capex analysis.

Press Contact Michael Howard Principal Analyst and Co-Founder Infonetics Research 408-583-3351 Email Contact