Fiber Optics - Demand, Market Share and Market Leaders

Fiber Optics

Fiber Optics is a technology that deals with the transmission of information from one place to another through optical fibers where light acts as a carrier. This technique uses glass or plastic threads that are equally thin as a human hair to transfer data. Though this technology shares many affinities with the traditional copper wire method, it is standing revolutionary due to the benefits such as high bandwidth, long distance communication, high safety and security alongside offering cables thinner and lighter compared to metal wires.

Fiber Optics Demand

Some leading concerns like greater safety, security, requirement for 4G, LTE and FTTx and high speed transmission levels incurred more demand for this advanced technique fiber optics over metal communication lines. As the data transmission with fiber optics follows no attenuation they are perching on higher levels of demand.  On the other side, increase in the demand is also due to investments in the fields like telecommunications and information technology and new developments in the countries like China, U.S, Brazil, India and Western and Eastern European countries.

Currently China has the largest market for fiber optic products globally and is also a leading market player as a consumer though the fiber optics market in 2013 was immensely ruled by North America, Asia-Pacific and Europe who jointly took a whopping 90% share from the market. China's demand for fiber optics was huge in the last decade and it is expected to grow continuously in both production and demand in the next five years while the demand for fiber optics in Asia-Pacific is relying on the connectivity improvement and serving up to the increasing demand from 3G/4G usage. The rise of demand in other economies like the U.S., Germany and Japan is also high due to the adaptation of networks like fiber to the node and fiber to the home. The overall efforts and requirements drive the demand to reach 350 million fiber-km globally by 2019.

Fiber Optics Market Share and Market Leaders

The burgeoning market for fiber optics might observe a greater growth rate in between 2014 and 2019 with the chances of reaching a value of $3.0 billion, especially the Broadband & Telecom fiber optics market will experience the growth rate value of 5.9% by 2019. 

Taking into account the recent developments and other industry strategies the major market leaders of this industry are mentioned below.

 Corning (It is leading the market with USD 271.45 million revenue), an American based glass, ceramics and other materials manufacturer who introduced thin fiber threads that can able to transmit the data at the speed of light.  Lucent Technologies with the offering of Ultra Broadband technologies is leading next to Corning, and the leaders followed by Lucent includes cable Manufacturer Prysmian Group who is leading with €7 billion sales in 2014, Indian based Sterlite Technologies Limited, China based Yangtze Optical Fiber and Cable Co. Ltd, Japan based Fujikura Limited, U.S based Optical Cable Corporation, Denmark’s Ofs Fitel, Australian Fibreoptic Communications (AFC) and others.

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