Ovum: Optical market grew 7% in Q1

LONDON -- The global optical networking (ON) market iscontinuing to bounce back and reached revenues of $3.5bn in the first quarter of 2011, up seven per cent on the same period in 2010, according to Ovum.

In a new market analysis*, the independent telecoms analyst states that Alcatel-Lucent was the top-performing vendor in the first quarter of 2011 and hit revenues of $645m. This was an increase of 17 per cent compared to quarter one 2010 and saw it achieve a market share of 18.4 per cent. It was the first quarter in two years that Alcatel-Lucent has posted number-one market revenues.

Importantly, Ovum found that annualised spending in the optical networking market appears to have crawled out of the red andinto the black in the first quarter of 2011, albeit barely, with growth of one per cent to reach more than $14.6bn. Annualised share figures tend to give the best indicator of longer-term market trends.

Dana Cooperson, Ovum network infrastructure practice leader and author of the market report, commented: "The optical networking market continued to improve as we turned the page on a new year.Although spending was seasonally down on the previous quarter, the growth compared to the same quarter last year is very encouraging."

Ovum Ltd.