2016 a Breakout Year for 100G Technologies in Network Equipment Markets

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IHS today released excerpts from its IHS Infonetics Networking Ports: 1G, 2.5G, 10G,  40G, 100G report, which explores the demand for 1 Gigabit, 2.5 Gigabit, 10 Gigabit, 40 Gigabit and 100 Gigabit optical and Ethernet ports, the size of the market and how fast each segment is growing, and which technologies and speeds are being adopted on various types of enterprise and service provider equipment.

“Deployments of 1G and higher networking ports continue unabated by both enterprises and service providers as they seek to bring capacity in line with the demands placed on their networks. In general, the higher the port speed, the higher the growth rate, which means that 40G and 100G are the key growth segments of the market. However, in a bit of a twist, 2.5G revenue had the highest growth in 2014 due to massive increases in GPON OLT spending in China and the rollout of Gigabit services in North America,” said Matthias Machowinski, research director for enterprise networks and video at IHS. “Looking ahead, we expect 40G revenue to start falling as early as 2017, as enterprise and data center demand shifts to the newly-released QSFP-based 100G technology.”

Research director for carrier transport networking at IHS and co-author of the report Andrew Schmitt added: “2016 is poised to be a breakout year for 100G technologies as coherent 100G ports ramp in metro networks, and companies such as Google, Microsoft and Amazon introduce 100G Ethernet switching technology into their massive hyperscale data centers.”

NETWORKING PORTS MARKET HIGHLIGHTS

• 1G/2.5G/10G/40G/100G port shipments are anticipated by IHS to exceed 700 million in 2015, totaling $45 billion
• 100G port shipments more than doubled in 2014 from the prior year, reaching 163,000
• IHS forecasts worldwide 100G port revenue to grow at a 137 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2014 to 2019