APAC optical n/w equipment spending recovers

BOSTON, USA: The optical spending slowdown in Asia Pacific that Infonetics forecasted last year is accelerating, with continued weak quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year performance, finds Infonetics research.

The analyst firm also added that optical network equipment spending returned in the EMEA region also after many quarters of a weak recovery.

Quarter-over-quarter, 2Q10 to 3Q10, the worldwide optical network hardware market increased 6.2% to $3.23 billion, led by healthy WDM equipment sales.

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"Spending was particularly strong in advanced WDM systems while legacy SDH spending did not come back. All vendors that sell into the EMEA region saw solid gains except Huawei, which saw a significant drop in shipments," notes Andrew Schmitt, directing analyst for optical, Infonetics Research.

Optical spending in the west (North America and the EMEA region) jumped 16 percent sequentially, as North America continued its multi-quarter recovery and big carriers in EMEA finally started spending on optical network equipment again.

The ROADM equipment segment surged 25 percent quarter-over-quarter, setting a new high

Alcatel-Lucent returned to #1 market share position after four quarters, swapping places with Huawei after outperforming them in EMEA.

Infonetics' newly updated packet-optical transport systems (P-OTS) equipment category grew 11 percent sequentially based on strong spending from Verizon.