According to Infonetics Research, Alcatel-Lucent, Huawei, Ciena, and Fujitsu led the wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) and the reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexer (ROADM) optical hardware market in 2012.
The research firm adds that the WDM ROADM equipment market (excluding components) touched $4 billion in 2012, a 10 per cent year-over-year increase. However, revenues of the ROADM wavelength selective switch components space declined by over a quarter last year.
Meanwhile, in the second half of 2012, sales of ROADM WSS components stabilised while recording substantial unit growth.
Going forward, this space is likely to witness marginal growth, owing to the deployment of new 100G coherent systems and the rollout of colorless, directionless and contentionless (CDC) ROADMs.
While CDC ROADM architecture is generating interest, the current pricing premium given to this architecture by equipment vendors is expected to adversely impact adoption.
