JULY 16, 2007 -- For the first time in two years, the optical transceiver market declined in Q1 2007, according to the Transceiver Sales Report from transceiver research company LightCounting (search for LightCounting). According to the report's author and the founder of LightCounting, Vladimir Kozlov, this decline is temporary and due to seasonal patterns in the optical networking equipment sales, inventory correction in the Fibre Channel market, and increasing share of lower cost 10-Gbit/sec modules.
"Despite a five percent drop in transceiver revenues in the first quarter of 2007, the industry fundamentals remain strong," said Kozlov. "The decline was caused by a combination of short-term effects, while the long-term trends are very encouraging." Kozlov noted that this dip is normal for a healthy market.
LightCounting's analysis suggests no signs of a slowdown in deployment of next-generation products. The report confirms that sales of 40G modules and tunable DWDM transponders increased substantially in Q1 2007 and Q4 2006. While total sales of 10-Gbit/sec transceivers were flat in Q1 2007, there is a very encouraging trend of rapidly increasing sales of compact, low-cost XFP and X2 modules. The majority of these modules are sold for 50- to 300-m optical links, which is a very high volume market.
The report offers a detailed analysis of quarterly transceiver sales in SONET/SDH, Ethernet, Fibre Channel, WDM, FFTx, and parallel optical modules market segments. It also breaks down global sales by geographic region and correlates trends in transceiver market with dynamics of the optical networking industry.
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