Telecommunications

Defined as being inclusive of servers, storage, networking hardware and high speed links, cloud equipment represents a growing market with outlook dovetailed to the health of the cloud IT services market. Widespread adoption of cloud services, especially public cloud services, is driving demand for cloud equipment among cloud based IT service providers.  Global market for Cloud Equipment is projected to reach US$79.1 billion by 2018, driven by growing demand for public cloud computing services, and increased deployment of private and hybrid clouds.

New study finds that billions of new users and billions more machines will drive the intelligent systems market to over 5 billion units and nearly $2.4 trillion in revenue by 2017. The market for intelligent systems – those enabled with high-performance microprocessors, IP connectivity, and high level operating systems – will grow from 3.5 billion units and $1.7 trillion in revenue this year to more than 5 billion units and nearly $2.4 trillion in revenue by 2017.

After a setback in 2009 and very slight growth in 2010, the global market has been inching back to a more solid recovery since 2011, growing by a modest 2.7% in 2012. This translates into telecom services revenue of €1,115 billion for the year. Now in a recovery phase, telecom markets in advanced countries are proving somewhat resilient, whereas in fast developing markets the increase in volume is so steady that the ripple effect far outweighs any structural obstacles. This phenomenon is telling of a mature industry now driven more by demographics than economics. In Africa/the Middle East, for instance, the drop in regional GDP in 2009 (-6%) and its rebound in 2010 (+16%) had very little impact on telecom services growth rates which remained very high both years: 8% and 9%, respectively.

The telecom industry is rapidly moving from wireline based to wireless. However, wireline continues to provide the infrastructure for the entirety. In this day of everything going wireless, it is important to separate access from network. Wireless is an access service, as is FiOS, Uverse, POTS, etc. They all use the wireline network to interconnect. Investment in wireline supports the network carriage of all access traffic, including wireless. Challenged by the ever-increasing demand for more network capacity, primarily due to mobile traffic growth, telecom carriers worldwide have been building their networks using new technologies – ROADMs and DWDMs largely.  A new report  - "Another Telecom Network Bust, 2000 All Over Again? Optical Network Market Analysis and Equipment Forecast 2013" investigates the market and technologies for ROADMs, DWDMs, Switches, and Routers.

European Union leaders have shown their interest in the development of a strong European telecommunications market that can underpin growth and job creation across the region. The GSMA welcomes this and now calls on the European Commission to seize the opportunity to drive regulatory reform and encourage the investments in telecoms infrastructure required to achieve Europe’s Digital Agenda targets. Progress towards a true, pan-European, competition-based telecoms market could provide a significant boost to GDP, innovation and investment in the EU 27 and establish a convergent path between the performance of the EU broadband market and that of the United States, which has, over the past decade, delivered substantially higher levels of investment.

The global economy has been volatile through the past 12 months, and this sense of uncertainty persisted into the first quarter of 2013. IDC expects the U.S. economy to stabilize in the second half of the year, driving IT spending growth of 5.5 percent. 2013 will be another tough year for Europe, however, where tech spending is expected to increase by just 2 percent as the Eurozone and UK struggle to shrug off the lingering debt crisis. Excluding mobile devices, growth in Europe will be less than 1 percent. Japan has meanwhile lost most of the post-reconstruction momentum that drove IT spending to increase by 4 percent in 2012, and will record IT growth of 0 percent this year.

Worldwide tablet market revenues at $834 million in 2012 are anticipated to reach $1.7 billion by 2018. DSL chip markets are forecast to grow year-over-year throughout the forecast period. This is in the context of a world communications infrastructure that is changing and seeking to leverage the existing plant to hold down costs. Technology is enabling interaction, innovation, and sharing of knowledge in new ways. DSL chips promise to bring significant new broadband for Internet access capability making the Internet available for increasingly productive, efficient use.

Worldwide optical transceiver markets are poised to achieve significant growth as the data in networks expands exponentially. As cloud systems proliferate and wireless data takes hold the efficiencies brought by high speed end-to-end optical networks are needed by carriers and in the data center. The global optical component market at $3.6 billion in 2012 is anticipated to reach $12.3 billion by 2019. Growth is driven by the availability of high speed processors and component devices that support increased speed and traffic on the optical networks. The migration to all optical networks is ongoing.

Eight of the top global networking equipment vendors -- collectively generating an estimated $124 billion in 2012 revenue, or approximately 90% of total worldwide network infrastructure revenue -- are placing significant emphasis on professional services and software product enhancements that can enable them to access CSP opex budgets in addition to capital budgets. Vendors profiled include Alcatel-Lucent, Ciena, Cisco, Ericsson, Huawei, Juniper, NSN, and ZTE.

With the advent of new touch sensor structures driven by consumer demand for lighter and thinner devices, NPD DisplaySearch group finds that in-cell touch technology and DITO (dual ITO) film are the wave of the future. More than 7.5% of the mobile phone marketplace will be using in-cell touch in 2012, a number that is estimated to grow to 16.7% by 2018. In addition, tablet PCs, which primarily utilize projected capacitive touch technology, will see a5% shipment share of DITO film structure technology in 2012.