LightTrends Newsletter

LightCounting releases January 2023 report “Vendors and Markets for Optics in China”

Chinese manufacturers of optical components and modules have gradually gained share of the global market over the last decade. Figure below illustrates their current dominance in the global market for Ethernet transceivers. Smaller market segments, such as FTTx and wireless fronthaul, are almost fully owned by the Chinese manufacturers.

Many non-Chinese vendors exited the optical transceiver market, unable to compete with the Chinese suppliers. In the latest example of this trend, Applied Optoelectronics (AOI) divested its transceiver business to a Chinese company in early 2022, re-focusing AOI on laser chip manufacturing.

Non-Chinese suppliers continue to lead in sales of pluggable high-speed DWDM transceivers, but this situation may change. Cisco (Acacia) and Marvell (Inphi) have taken an early lead in shipments of 400ZR/ZR+ transceivers, but we expect that other suppliers will catch up in 2024-2025 and some of these suppliers will be Chinese.

The initial success of Chinese transceiver vendors was facilitated by strong demand for optics inside of China, but it was sales of optics to the US-based Cloud companies that propelled Innolight and more recently Eoptolink to new sales records. Sales of HG Genuine increased sharply in 2021, when the company became a supplier of Bytedance (TikTok).

More information on the report is available at: Market reports