Optical component revenues hit US$4.7B in 2021 – report
Created April 25, 2022
News and BusinessCloud operator capex for hyperscale datacenter expansion drove datacom optical component revenue growth by 27% to reach US$4.7 billion in 2021, according to Cignal AI’s new Optical Components Report. The market researcher says this growth outstripped component revenue growth from telecom, consumer, and industrial optical component applications. Total revenue for optical components across all four segments grew 15% to reach US$14.5 billion in 2021.
The Optical Components Report also tracks detailed unit shipments of datacom and telecom transceivers across multiple module types and reaches. Shipments of 400GbE datacom modules doubled and reached record levels in 2021, as large cloud operators and select enterprise customers transitioned from 100G to this new speed.
“The transition to 400GbE is well underway, and pluggable coherent 400Gbps technology is revolutionizing the design of the optical networks that connect datacentres,” said Scott Wilkinson, lead optical component analyst at Cignal AI. “400Gbps speeds will drive spending and bandwidth growth both inside and outside the datacentre in 2022.”
The report also notes that supply chain difficulties limited Telecom optical components market growth the most in 2021. However, the segment is forecast to grow more than 8% in 2022; consumer component revenue for 3D sensing applications was flat YoY as lower-cost components offset higher unit shipments and industrial optical components used for welding and medical applications grew 18% in 2021, following a weak 2020. It says that following the acquisition of Coherent, II-VI is poised to control over 50% of this market.
So far as different form factors are concerned, Cignal.AI says 1.8 million QSFP-DD datacom modules shipped during 2021, most of which were DR4 format. Over 60,000 400Gbps pluggable coherent modules shipped last year, the majority of which were QSFP-DD ZR. Shipments of 200Gbps coherent CFP2 modules grew 17% to just over 200,000 units during 2021 as Chinese OEMs ramp this speed (which is less dependent on western technology) for longer distance metro and long haul applications.
For more information, visit https://cignal.ai
