Huawei Takes Lead in Optical Network Hardware Market, Study Says

Chinese equipment maker Huawei (News - Alert) has overtaken European networking giant Alcatel-Lucent to become the number one player in the global optical network hardware market, says a research report from Infonetics.

Preliminary results from Infonetics' Optical Network Hardware report show Huawei increasing its market share to 23 percent during the first quarter of 2009, just ahead of Alcatel-Lucent (News - Alert), which maintains the overall lead on an annualized basis.

"Since 2002, the optical network market has grown at an 8 percent compound annual growth rate, but for most vendors it looked more like 6 percent because Huawei absorbed a significant portion of the annualized gains,” says Andrew Schmitt, an analyst with Infonetics Research (News - Alert).

“I don't see this trend ending anytime soon, and if it doesn't, Huawei could be the overall market leader for 2009," he added.

Demand for optical networking has remained strong in Asia Pacific region though the market for this hardware is decreasing elsewhere, says another market research firm Ovum that has also informed about Huawei’s overtaking of Alcatel.

Huawei, which posted $790 million in revenue for the quarter, has largely been benefited from adoption of 3G in mainland China, along with the growth of teledensity in neighboring India.

 Analysts believe the economic recession and saturating telecom market in the West may have played against the French telecom giant Alcatel-Lucent.

Infonetics says worldwide optical network hardware sales dropped 22 per cent sequentially in 1Q09, from $4.0 billion to $3.1 billion.

Besides Lucent, Huawei competes with Ericsson (News - Alert), NEC, and ZTE for larger share in the global optical networking market.

Infonetics’ full report provides worldwide and regional market share, market size, forecasts through 2013, and analysis for metro and long haul optical equipments.