First quarter 2020 revenues of optical transceiver and component vendors declined 12% sequentially, after reaching a new high in Q4 2019, due to the global pandemic, according to a new report from LightCounting. The report finds that companies located in China were more heavily impacted in Q1 because of the complete shutdown of factories and construction in many parts of that country. Alibaba for example spent considerably less than in Q1 2019, simply because planned construction could not proceed and equipment was in short supply.
LightCounting also finds that Huawei lost some share in 100G port shipments, while d Accelink and HG Genuine, located in Wuhan, saw revenues plummet by 30-50% sequentially.
LightCounting said it remains confident that ICP spending will continue to be a strong driver of growth in the optical transceiver market. The most recent data shows that cloud revenues of the hyper-scalers continue to grow faster than other business segments, and operate at higher profit margins – ICPs would be extremely foolish to starve their cash cows of needed infrastructure.
