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Active Optical Cabling Markets: 2011 and Beyond
CIR, June 2011, Pages: 90
Active Optical Cables (AOCs) are still a niche market. CIR believes that they will generate less than $60 million in 2011 and these revenues will largely come from sales into the data center (and especially the InfiniBand) market. Nonetheless, AOCs remain the best way for markets where knowledge of fiber optic communications is scarce to derive the benefits of optical networking. Soon, other markets will pick up on how AOCs can help them shift towards fiber optics. These include not only a broad range of data communications applications, but also digital signage and various consumer electronics applications. CIR estimates that within five years, the worldwide AOC market will have reached $1.9 billion.
The goal of this report is to show how the AOC market will be able to achieve this success and the opportunities that it will spawn along the way. Although this report discusses technical trends in the AOC market, it is primarily focused on business strategy, analyzing each of the sectors in which AOCs are likely to find a market and identifying the main addressable markets. This report also provides an in-depth analysis of the strategies being deployed by major AOC firms and analyzes the trend towards AOCs being supplied by larger firms; a trend that will be helpful as AOCs begin to appear in mass markets. We have also taken a look at important marketing issues faced by AOC (such as the importance of branding in this space) and the role that offshore manufacturing is likely to play.
Two other features of this report are the profiles of the leading AOC suppliers and the eight-year forecasts. At the moment there are quite a few suppliers of AOCs out there, each with its own story to tell. Among other things, the supplier profiles in this report discuss the products that these firms are (or will soon) offer. They also analyze recent industry shaping events such as Molex's acquisition of Luxtera's AOC business and Intel's transition from its (predominantly optical) Light Peak technology to its (predominantly copper) Thunderbolt technology.
The eight-year forecasts in this report are based on an analysis of the growing need for AOCs in the data center/HPC, digital signage, PC interconnect and home theater markets. These forecasts take into consideration todays major drivers for fiber optic deployment such as 3-D television, cloud computing, and the inevitable rise in processor speeds. The forecasts are presented in dollar terms, but also in terms of the number of cables and length of cable shipped. We also project, which protocols will become dominant in the AOC space over the next few years, determining especially how AOCs will fit in with the rise of HDMI, DisplayPort and the latest generation of USB.
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