The global optical networking (ON) market is continuing to bounce back and reached revenues of $3.5 billion in the first quarter of 2011, up seven per cent on the same period in 2010, according to Ovum.
Alcatel-Lucent is the top-performing vendor in the first quarter of 2011 and hit revenues of $645 million. This was an increase of 17 per cent compared to quarter one 2010 and saw it achieve a market share of 18.4 per cent. It was the first quarter in two years that Alcatel-Lucent has posted number-one market revenues.
Of the top 10 vendors, Ciena posted the most gain in annualised share, over the period from the second quarter of 2010 to the first quarter of 2011, while Huawei lost the most.
Other vendors that improved their annualised share position, in decreasing order of gains, were Ericsson, Fujitsu, Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, and NEC. Rounding out the top 10, Tellabs and NSN lost share and ZTE neither gained nor lost.
Annualised spending in the optical networking market appears to have crawled out of the red and into the black in the first quarter of 2011, albeit barely, with growth of one per cent to reach more than $14.6 billion. Annualised share figures tend to give the best indicator of longer-term market trends.
The optical networking market continued to improve as we turned the page on a new year. Though spending was seasonally down on the previous quarter, the growth compared to the same quarter last year is very encouraging,” said Dana Cooperson, Ovum network infrastructure practice leader and author of the market report.
Even more important is the small increase in annualised spending, which has been driven by strong growth in dense wavelength division multiplexing market and a shift to optical products more fully optimised for continued strong growth in IP-based traffic,” Cooperson added.
The market growth has also been propelled by the Americas and annualised spending has continued to improve sequentially and year-on-year in both North America and South and Central America.
In contrast, in Asia-Pacific and Europe, Middle East and Africa spending continued to stagnate when compared to the same period last year. Asia-Pacific trends were particularly bleak in the first quarter of 2011.
By TelecomLead.com Team
