The optical networking equipment market has suffered more than other markets during this economic downturn. Not surprisingly, optical modules have been stifled right along with the equipment with which they are designed to work. Fortunately, from a technical basis, there are a lot of positive forces working in favor of optical modules. As the economic recovery starts to take hold in the second half of 2003, optical modules are expected to grow with the rest of the optical networking equipment market.
However, at the 10 Gbps line rate, there are some problems brewing. There are currently too many Multi-Source Agreements (MSAs) being promoted. This factor is likely to be an inhibitor until the number of MSAs is reduced from the 5 main forms:
300-pin
XenPak
XPAK
XFP
X2
By the end of the forecast period, we expect there will be only 2 main MSAs left standing, which will help to grow the optical module business from its current level of about $1 billion, to just over $3.5 billion by the end of 2007.