LONDON, UK (February 22, 2016) - The global optical network equipment market totaled $12.5 billion in 2015, growing 3 percent from the prior year, reports IHS Inc. (NYSE: IHS) in its Optical Network Hardware Market Tracker .

“After a subdued 3Q15, this quarter’s results represent a much-needed boost to the optical hardware market, with revenues demonstrating the fastest-growing fourth quarter for five years. Huawei and Alcatel-Lucent , in particular, performed well in the quarter, both gaining significantly in share compared to 3Q15,” said Alex Green, Senior Research Director for IT and Networking at IHS.

MORE OPTICAL HARDWARE MARKET HIGHLIGHTS

• In the 4^th quarter of 2015 (4Q15), worldwide optical spending was $3.5 billion, up 17 percent sequentially, and up 10 percent from the year-ago quarter (4Q14)
• Spending on wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) equipment in 4Q15 totaled $3.1 billion, up 18 percent from 4Q14
• EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) has not yet come out of its era of slow optical spending, showing a rolling quarter decline of 3 percent in 4Q15
• And in North America there was somewhat of a bounce back in Q4 after a flat Q3, with the region seeing 5 percent rolling 4-quarter growth
• For the full-year 2015, the top 5 optical hardware market share leaders are, in rank order, Huawei, Ciena, Alcatel-Lucent, ZTE and Infinera

OPTICAL REPORT SYNOPSIS

The quarterly optical network hardware report provides worldwide and regional market size, vendor market share, forecasts through 2020, analysis and trends for metro and long haul WDM and SONET/SDH equipment, Ethernet optical ports, SONET/SDH/POS ports and WDM ports. Companies tracked: Adtran, ADVA, Alcatel-Lucent, Ciena, Cisco, Coriant, ECI, Fujitsu, Huawei, Infinera, NEC, Padtec, Transmode, TE Connectivity , ZTE, others.