Forecast Report on Optical Network Hardware Market

Communications market research firm Infonetics Research released vendor market share from the fourth quarter (4Q09) edition of its Optical Network Hardware forecast report.

ANALYST NOTES

"Huawei was the top-selling optical network hardware vendor in 2009, with highest revenue in three out of four quarters. Alcatel-Lucent edged past Huawei in the fourth quarter, but not enough to take back its optical crown for the year," notes Andrew Schmitt, Infonetics Research's directing analyst for optical.

"Optical network hardware revenue dropped 14% worldwide in 2009, despite a modest gain in the Asia Pacific region. Even if the market posts 15% gains in 2010, it would still be short of the 2007-2008 spending levels in EMEA and North America. We do expect to see healthy growth in those two regions in 2010, which will help the industry return to a 6% to 8% long-term growth trend line. The Asia Pacific region is tougher to project because it is very hard to tell which growth is organic and which is liquidity-driven synthetic spending," adds Schmitt.