Q2 Optical Transport market down 19% y-o-y

The Optical Transport equipment market declined 19% y-o- y in Q2-due to excess customer inventory, delays in new project starts in Asia Pacific, and weak macroeconomic conditions.

The inventory correction that started in late 4Q 2023 is expected to continue for at least one more quarter.

“It was not so much the decline in the Optical Transport market that surprised me, it was the magnitude and breadth,” says Dell’Oro vp Jimmy Yu, “in the second quarter, nearly every region declined at a double-digit rate compared to 2Q 2023. This included a 15 percent decline in North America, 22 percent in Europe, and 28 percent in China to name a few,” added Yu.

The Optical Transport market outlook for 2024 was revised downward. The current forecast is for the Optical Transport equipment market to decline 8 percent in 2024.

Every region declined year-over-year in 2Q 2024 with the exception of the Middle East and African (MEA) region. The steepest decline was in Asia Pacific across all of the countries we tracked (China, India, and Japan).

Two vendors—Huawei and Cisco—gained more than 1 percentage point of market share in 2Q 2024 compared to the year ago period. Huawei’s share gain was nearly 6 percentage points.