Telecom Lead Asia: The global optical transceiver market, including 10G, 40G, and 100G transceivers, grew 10 percent to $1.63 billion in 2012 from 2011.
Infonetics Research says shipments of 40G QSFP long- and short-reach modules will triple in 2013.
Tunable XFP shipments more than doubled in 2012, though at the expense of falling prices.
Despite surging in Japan, the overall market for 40G coherent modules is declining as 100G coherent deployments accelerate in China and other regions.
Tunable XFPs are the big growth opportunity. Unit shipments are expected to grow at a 36 percent CAGR from 2012 to 2017, driven by the continued strength of the 10G metro market.
Infonetics Research noted that 2012 was the peak year for 40G WDM, but QSFP-based enterprise applications are ramping nicely.
“100G optical transceivers arrived in force in 2012, with virtually every vendor fielding a solution. Though the market is nascent and the growth rate will slow, coherent 100G shipments are on track to more than double in 2013 and again in 2014,” said Andrew Schmitt, principal analyst for optical at Infonetics Research.
