Alcatel-Lucent, Huawei, Ciena, and Fujitsu are leading the WDM ROADM reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexer optical hardware market in 2012.
Telecom research agency Infonetics Research says the WDM ROADM equipment market (not components) reached $4 billion in 2012, up 10 percent year-over-year.
Its latest research note says ROADM WSS (wavelength selective switch components) revenue declined more than a quarter in 2012.
In the second half of 2012, sales of ROADM WSS components stabilized while recording healthy unit growth.
“It’s been a tough road for WSS components these past couple of years, with quarterly revenue down nearly 50 percent from the highs two years ago,” said Andrew Schmitt, principal analyst for optical at Infonetics Research.
Infonetics Research says there’s some modest growth ahead tied to the deployment of new 100G coherent systems and the rollout of colorless, directionless and contentionless (CDC) ROADMs.
While the level of interest in CDC ROADMs is very high from vendors, the current pricing premium given to this architecture by equipment vendors will slow adoption.
