IHS reveals optical equipment market growth for Q1

optical network equipment spending in Q1 2016Technology analyst firm IHS has revealed the growth of the global optical equipment market during the first quarter of 2016.

Nokia is the number-two optical equipment manufacturer, behind leader Huawei in the first quarter of 2016, said IHS.

Q1 2016 marked Nokia’s re-entry into the optical equipment market — anchored by the former Alcatel-Lucent’s optical network business.

Optical network equipment spending fell 12 percent sequentially and increased 13 percent year-over-year in Q1 2016.

The increase in the growth of the global optical network equipment spending during the first quarter was driven the investment in 100G in long haul and metro applications.

Long haul wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) spending grew 23 percent. The 100G long haul market continues to be robust, with projects in China and North America underway and delivering significant revenue. Several vendors have noted that they see no letup in 100G long haul demand.

The telecom analysis report said metro WDM market increased 15 percent. Data center expansion, public and private cloud adoption, preparation for broader introduction of 4K video and emerging virtual reality (VR) applications are expected to continue to drive the growth of bandwidth in the metro.

IHS said Synchronous Optical Networking (SONET) and Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH) spending continues to decline, representing just 11 percent of the total optical equipment market in Q1 2016.

Asia Pacific is the largest consumer of optical hardware in Q1 2016, representing close to 40 percent of overall market spend.

Optical equipment spending in Europe, Middle East, Africa (EMEA) fell 19 percent sequentially and rose 2 percent from the year-ago quarter.