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Market
Research
March
15, 2004
Optical hardware up 16 percent in
Q4-03
UNITED
STATES -- According to Infonetics Research’s quarterly
worldwide market share and forecast services, Optical
Network Hardware and PON Hardware Worldwide, optical
network hardware revenue rose by16 percent in Q4-03,
but fell by 15 percent for the year at US $8.4 billion,
while PON revenue surged by a whopping 240 percent to
US $182 million from 2002 to 2003.
Michael
Howard, principal analyst and co-founder, Infonetics
Research, said: "Q4-03 was a great quarter for
optical hardware. This segment enjoyed the benefits
of an especially big year-end service provider capex
flush. Metro SONET/SDH and WDM were strong in Q4-03,
being driven by increased corporate network traffic,
storage networking, and service provider wireless network
backhaul. PON is growing rapidly in APAC, especially
Japan, where hundreds of thousands of subscribers are
using ePON and aPON. PON is slowly lifting off in North
America, mostly in new home builds and in neighborhoods
where the copper plant is being rehabilitated. We expect
PON to continue expanding rapidly through 2007."
Market
highlights for the year 2003 and Q4-03 include:
-
Alcatel leads the worldwide optical network hardware
market in Q4-03. Fujitsu and Nortel tie for second
position;
- Worldwide
2003 metro WDM revenue increased by 34 percent from
2002, which evinces a healthy, burgeoning, metro WDM
market;
- Nortel
and ADVA remain the first and second placed in the
worldwide metro WDM market in 2003, respectively;
- SONET/SDH
is the mainstay optical technology, making up 69 percent
of worldwide optical equipment sales in 2003;
- Intelligent
optical network hardware makes up 82 percent of all
optical network hardware revenue in 2003. Legacy hardware
is likely to decline to 1 percent by 2007; and
- Metro
revenue comprises 67 percent of all optical network
hardware revenue in 02-03, a long haul 33 percent.
This near 2:1 ratio will move toward 70:30 over the
next four years.
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