Nokia replaces ZTE for third position in optical equipment

optical-network-equipment-in-q3-2016
The optical equipment market revenue rose 7 percent year-on-year and fell 9 percent quarter-on-quarter to $3.2 billion in Q3 2016, according to the quarterly IHS Markit optical network hardware report.

Huawei continued to lead the optical equipment market, supported by spending on 100G projects in China, as well as strength in EMEA and CALA.

Ciena has maintained its commanding lead in the North American optical equipment market and maintained second place overall.

Nokia has replaced ZTE as the third largest optical equipment maker overall based on performance in the submarine line terminating equipment (SLTE) segment, where it regained the number-one market share position.

Heidi Adams, senior research director, transport networks, IHS Markit, said that the extremely high growth rates seen in the Chinese optical equipment market in the first half of 2016 have moderated.

100G wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) long haul and data center interconnect (DCI) applications continue to be hot areas for optical equipment investment.

The sequential drop in the optical equipment market was a result of the typical seasonal slowdown in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and the Caribbean and Latin America (CALA)—and also a dip in Asian Pacific investment from an extremely high Q2 2016.

Optical spending in China fell more than 19 percent sequentially and increased over 14 percent year-over-year, as 100G infrastructure investment led by China Mobile continued.

100G long haul continues to perform well despite a drop in investment from Infinera customers. And the DCI market driven by the internet content providers (ICPs) is also driving growth.

The WDM equipment segment dipped 6 percent sequentially and rose 10 percent year-over-year at to $2.9 billion in Q3 2016. WDM is and will continue to be the growth engine for optical networks.

IHS Markit forecast 2015‒2020 compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7 percent for this segment.

Synchronous Optical Networking (SONET) and Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH) segment revenue fell 18 percent from the year-ago quarter.