Optical transport equipment market dropped to $3.1B in Q3 2015, says research firm

Although metro WDM spending remains strong amongst top service providers, the optical transport equipment market declined year-over-year to $3.1 billion, said Dell'Oro Group. The research firm attributed the drop to slower sales in the quarter in all technology segments with the exception of WDM metro equipment. Due to higher demand for metro capacity and greater use of 200 Gbps DWDM optical platforms, WDM Metro revenue grew 15 percent year-over-year in the quarter. Availability from multiple vendors, benefits of inventory management, and better dollar-per-bit pricing drove demand for 200 Gbps wavelength speeds at a rate higher than previously forecast.

"The WDM Metro market grew sharply higher year-over-year, but in the same period, DWDM Long Haul growth stopped," said Jimmy Yu, VP at Dell'Oro Group, in release. "While the Americas regions grew with a sharp rebound in North America, the other two regions -- EMEA and Asia Pacific -- declined further."

There were a number of key shifts during the quarter amongst the key optical players. Ciena and Infinera closed their acquisitions of Cyan and Transmode. Dell'Oro said that Ciena's acquisition of Cyan helped it achieve the second highest Optical Transport market share in the quarter, below Huawei's and above ZTE's. Release