Ciena is top of the pack in IHS (News - Alert) Markit’s Annual Optical Network Hardware Vendor Scorecard. The research company released the scorecard late last month.
IHS Markit ranked Ciena No. 1 in market momentum for this product category. It placed Ciena second in terms of market presence. And in a vendor graph akin to the Gartner Magic Quadrant, IHS Markit listed Ciena as an optical industry “leader” along with Cisco, Huawei (News - Alert), and Nokia.
Meanwhile, IHS Markit named Coriant, Fujitsu, Infinera, ADVA, ECI, and ZTE as optical network hardware “challengers”. The research company has a third vendor box labeled “established.” No suppliers reside in that section in this report.
IHS Markit considered brand recognition, buyer feedback, financials, market share and momentum, reputation for innovation, other factors in making it determinations for this report and scorecard.
Ciena was awarded the lead position in market momentum in light of its continuing investment in core technology; its portfolio enhancements and expansion; its above-average market share gains in 2017; and its focus on growth areas including 100G+, DCI, and packet-optical. In noting its second place ranking in the market presence, Ciena mentioned its 14 percent market share. The vendor added that these two rankings gave it the highest combined score in 2017 of all suppliers in the marketplace.
In May Heidi Adams of IHS Markit wrote that the optical equipment market had a strong close last year, but it “got off to a lackluster start in 2018.” Global optical network hardware revenue was $3.1 billion in the first quarter of this year. That represented a 25 percent sequential decline and was flat compared to the first quarter 2017.
In a different study released last month by Dell’Oro Group, that market research firm said the optical transport equipment market is likely to reach $16 billion 2022. And it said the wave division multiplexing systems will contribute 95 percent of that revenue.
“We expect demand for optical equipment to continue rising,” said Jimmy Yu, Vice President at Dell’ (News - Alert)Oro Group. “Although the shift away from legacy optical transport equipment will continue to weigh down the market’s top line revenue, we foresee a rising use of WDM systems as service providers continue to expand their fiber footprint and Internet content providers continue to install more optical transport capacity between their global data centers.”
Edited by Maurice Nagle