The worldwide optical transport equipment market grew sequentially in the last quarter of 2008, but revenues in the quarter were lower than that of the second quarter, reveals a new report from Dell'Oro Group  The report indicates that the optical transport market grew 12% in 2008 and is forecasted to decline 9% in 2009.

"In the fourth quarter, we saw flat sequential growth in North America and EMEA and strong sequential growth in sales to Asia Pacific," says Jimmy Yu, Director of Optical Transport research at Dell'Oro Group.

"As anticipated, due to a weakening economy, the fourth quarter did not have a large seasonal uplift that is typical at the end of the year. However, there were a couple of bright spots in the fourth quarter," he continues. "One was increased revenues in Asia Pacific, which accounted for nearly one-third of the worldwide market in the fourth quarter. The other bright spot was the 80% sequential growth in 40 Gigabit DWDM wavelengths as more service providers deployed this speed in their networks," notes Yu.

The vendors with leading market shares in the fourth quarter of 2008 were Alcatel-Lucent, Huawei, Nortel, and Ericsson, which in aggregate comprise more than half of the entire market. The vendors with sequential market share gains were Huawei, Nortel, ZTE, and Ericsson.