According to a recent report released by Dell 'Oro Group, the global optical transmission market is expected to grow at an annual rate of 3%, reaching $16 billion by 2024.

Looking at different geographical regions, North America and Latin America saw a year-on-year decline in the third quarter of 2023, due to reasons including overstocking, worsening macroeconomic conditions, concerns about economic recession, and rising borrowing costs.

The North American optical transmission equipment market shrank by 4% year-on-year (Y/Y) in the third quarter of 2023. This contrasts sharply with markets outside North America: demand in these other regions improved for the third consecutive quarter, growing 6% year-on-year.

The study states that the reason for the year-on-year decline in North America and Latin America in the third quarter of 2023 was due to overstocking, worsening macroeconomic conditions, concerns about economic recession, and rising borrowing costs.

In terms of key manufacturers, compared with the same period last year, Ciena, FiberHome, and Nokia all increased their market share by more than one percentage point in the past four quarters.

Jimmy Yu, Vice President of Dell 'Oro Group, said: "The market dynamics in North America are different from other parts of the world because the supply chain and component crisis has led to a rush for optical equipment in the market. Then, when the component supply improved, service providers began to receive more equipment than they needed, causing new orders to be suspended and delivery times to be postponed to 2024."

"The market dynamics in other regions vary for various reasons, such as some countries' COVID-19 policies slowing economic growth, and other countries experiencing wars. Therefore, the service providers in these countries had not yet built up inventory at the beginning of 2023."

Dell 'Oro Group's Optical Transmission Quarterly Report provides comprehensive, in-depth market coverage, including manufacturers' revenue, average selling prices, and unit shipments (by speed including 100Gbps, 200Gbps, 400Gbps, and 800Gbps). The report tracks DWDM long-haul, WDM metropolitan, multiservice multiplexers (SONET/SDH), optical switches, optical packet platforms, data center interconnects (metropolitan and long-haul), and disaggregated WDM.

A report released by Dell 'Oro Group in July this year also predicted that the demand for optical transmission equipment is expected to reach $83 billion in the next five years. Compared with the previous five years, this cumulative revenue growth was 10%, mainly from sales of coherent DWDM systems.