Infinera ranks high as long-haul market improves
The global market for optical equipment used in communications systems has grown by 31% in the past year, claims a new report by analysts at Dell Oro Group.
Alcatel ranked highest of the system vendors sharing a worldwide market worth $2.1 billion in the third quarter of 2005, and the France-based company was followed by Nortel, Lucent and Chinese firm Huawei.
"The optical market continues to exceed my expectations," said Jimmy Yu, Dell Oro s director for optical transport research. "This was the fourth consecutive quarter of higher optical revenue in North America, keeping the worldwide optical market in a state of growth."
Long-haul applications are showing particularly strong growth in North America, and in the specific area of 10 Gb/s systems, photonic integration specialist Infinera appears to be stealing market share away from its more established rivals.
The company, which manufactures massively-integrated chips at its own InP fabrication facility in Sunnyvale, CA, says that it ranked number one in Dell Oro s latest survey of high-speed, long-haul optical network system suppliers.
"We are thrilled to rank first in the Dell Oro figures only 10 months after we began shipping our product," said Jagdeep Singh, the co-founder and CEO of Infinera.
The firm has revealed details of five customers since it began officially shipping products in late 2004. Measured in terms of the number of 10 Gb/s wavelengths shipped in the third quarter, Infinera took a market share of 20%.
Infinera s photonic integrated circuits (PICs) feature more than 60 optical components on a single chip, and are manufactured using MOCVD. Currently deploying 100 Gb/s systems, the firm is also planning to roll out 400 Gb/s systems over the medium term, believing that the data rate demanded by network operators will double every two years.
