Eight Development Trends of Optical Communication Industry

With the development of the optical communication industry, whether it is the chaos of Google Optical Fiber or Baidu Optical Fiber, the painful and happy situation of the market is always promoting the process of merger and integration of the industry. In the future, market, technology and industrial trends will be analyzed and predicted by relevant research institutions. What will happen to the future market, technology and industry development of optical communications?

NO.1 optical fiber market is painful and happy, merger and integration may begin.

The prospect of optical fiber market is "painful and happy".

Judging from the current situation, the price of optical fiber and cable remains low. Prefabricated rod has become the key for domestic optical fiber and cable manufacturers to improve profitability and obtain higher competitiveness, and the capacity utilization of prefabricated rod has become an important factor for domestic enterprises to consider. The optical fiber and cable industry has the highest technical content and the biggest barrier is the upstream preform link. At present, large domestic manufacturers have achieved self-production in the field of optical preform, realizing the layout of the whole industry chain of optical preform, optical fiber and optical cable.

However, the overall market layout is still good. China's optical fiber production and sales of optical fiber active connectors is the largest manufacturer in the mainland, with a market share as high as 20%. In the first half of last year, the group's turnover was 776 million yuan, up 8.5%, and the profit attributable to shareholders was 129 million yuan, up 16.2%. In the third quarter of last year, the single-quarter turnover was 475 million yuan, up 30.9% year-on-year, while the total turnover in the first three quarters was 1.251 billion yuan, an increase of 16.1%. Far better than the first half of the year, the annual results are worth looking forward to. Taking China Optical Fiber's annual profit of 300 million yuan, its current PE is as low as 7 times, and has the ability to rise further.

Serious optical fiber overcapacity large-scale merger and integration may begin

In recent years, supported by the national policy on the broadband industry, the optical fiber cable industry has developed rapidly, accompanied by many problems. In addition, domestic optical fiber manufacturers will also face more severe challenges, the collective procurement of optical fiber and cable by domestic operators will continue to decline, while there are many domestic optical fiber enterprises, the demand will become less, the competition will be more fierce, and finally lead to vicious competition. In such a "bad" environment, it is said that large-scale merger and integration is about to begin, while some small factories are entering the optical fiber industry, and industry leaders are also arranging mergers and acquisitions, so that small factories across the country can enjoy the cool "big tree".

NO.2 China's optical fiber and cable market revenue may reach 165 billion in 2018

According to the China Optical Fiber and Cable Manufacturing Market report released by the enterprise and market website, the revenue of China's optical fiber manufacturing market and optical cable manufacturing market increased by 18.4 percent in 2013, reaching US $15.3 billion (about 94.86 billion yuan). In the past five years to 2013, the annual interest rate on industry income reached 17.2%. From 2008 to 2013, the high domestic market grew at an annual rate of 17.6%, thanks to the fact that a large number of information technology and communications projects require products from the optical cable market.

Due to the strong household demand for network and mobile phone services, the field of information technology and communications has become a major market for optical fiber and optical cable. In addition, power generation enterprises are another important market in the industry.

NO.3 Global fixed-line Broadband users will reach 989 million in 2020

Global broadband subscriber forecasts from PointTopic show that while the growth rate looks relatively constant, it is actually not as strong as previously predicted. PointTopic predicts that the number of fixed-line broadband subscribers worldwide will reach 989.4 million by the end of 2020.

The difference in the growth rate of broadband users around the world depends on the development of the broadband market. The research firm divides the global broadband market into three parts: emerging markets, young markets and mature markets. From the chart below, we can see that there are very obvious differences in the growth rates of different types of markets.

NO.4 Global Optical Fiber Sensor Market will reach US $4.33 billion in 2018

As one of the most important parts of the Internet of things, optical fiber sensor has attracted much attention because of its advantages and applications. From the perspective of the global market, the global optical fiber sensor market was 1.89 billion US dollars in 2013. It is expected that the global optical fiber sensor market will grow at an average annual growth rate of 18% from 2014 to 2018, reaching US $4.33 billion by 2018.

From the point of view of the research of optical fiber sensing technology, the research on this technology in the United States is the earliest and the most advanced in the world. According to the data, the US optical fiber sensor market was $235 million in 2007 and has since grown at a compound annual growth rate of 30 per cent, and is expected to reach $1.6 billion in 2014.

Compared with the United States, China's optical fiber sensing industry is in its infancy. According to statistics, by the end of 2013, there are more than 260 sensor manufacturing enterprises with a scale of more than 20 million yuan in China. However, the overall quality of the industry is uneven, with small enterprises accounting for nearly 70%, mainly producing low-end products; a small number of leading enterprises and foreign-funded enterprises occupy the high-end product market.

The cumulative laying of NO.5 2018 global submarine optical cables will reach 2 million km.

The well-known market report website released a new market report, which pointed out that by 2018, the cumulative global submarine optical cable laying is expected to reach 2 million km. This is driven by increased Internet protocol traffic, increased demand for bandwidth, and the creation of additional cable paths and system growth.

Modern economies, individuals and enterprises have increasingly relied on uninterrupted global data interconnection. With the rapid growth of bandwidth demand, optical fiber interconnection to support the growth of data traffic has ushered in an increasing demand. Today, the vast majority of cross-ocean network traffic is transmitted through submarine cables, which is more efficient than satellites. Submarine optical cables carry about 100% of the entire international network traffic and more than 95% of the global integrated data and audio traffic. Data traffic transmitted through submarine optical cables has advantages in terms of high reliability, security, capacity and cost-effectiveness.

NO.6 2013-2019 North American optical network market is growing fastest.

Ovum said in its 2013-2019 optical network market forecast that the global optical network market will grow at an average annual rate of 5 per cent during the forecast period, North America will lead the market growth, and data center deployment and 100G demand will be the main drivers.

Data center construction drives the demand for optical interconnection. "data center operators are almost a new category of buyers," said IanRedpath, chief analyst for network infrastructure at Ovum. Investment in data centers is growing faster than telecom operators' investment in fixed and mobile networks. "this investment trend is more pronounced among large data center operators in North America, and we believe it will continue throughout the forecast period," Redpath said.

NO.7 's global telecom wholesale service revenue will reach US $142 billion in 2019.

Ovum's research shows that even if the price of wholesale telecom services goes down, the overall revenue of wholesale telecom services will increase in the next few years. There is no doubt that the Asian market will take the lead, and it is expected that the Asian market will drive the overall telecom wholesale services market revenue of US $142 billion by 2019.

Ovum said its analysis was based on the financial performance of more than 200 telecom service providers around the world. Ovum also expects the wholesale services market share to grow to 6.6 per cent of total telecoms revenue by 2019, compared with 5.5 per cent in 2012.

NO.8 2019 data Center active Optical Cable Market will reach US $1.5 billion

According to the latest report from research firm CIR, the market for active fiber optic cables (AOC) used in data centers will reach $1.5 billion by 2019. The report, entitled "active Optical Cable Market-data Center applications" (ActiveOpticalCableMarkets--DataCenterApplications), is one of two volumes of CIR's report. CIR has another volume of market analysis on active fiber optic cable, which is aimed at personal computing, consumer electronics and digital signage.

At present, China has become the largest optical communication market in the world, which is quite eye-catching in terms of industrial scale and market space. China's optical fiber and cable shipments have been close to half of the global total, becoming a veritable optical fiber manufacturing country. With the landing of the "Broadband China" strategy and the opening of the 4G commercial era, China's optical communication industry will usher in a larger space for development.

With the rapid development of optical network in the 4G era, the relevant market data show that in optical communication equipment, the global optical cable installation is growing steadily, and the market of optical modules and optical devices will be more prosperous in the future. FTTH access market is hot, and it is also expected to lead the market of optical devices such as PON to heat up.