Optical Communications Industry Weekly Report-4th Nov.

• LC: The optical access optics market will decline by 20% in 2023, but the CAGR will reach 9% in the next five years

LightCounting currently expects total Access Optics market shipments to decline by 10% and sales to decline by nearly 20% compared to 2022. But in the next five years, led by next-generation products, the market will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9%. In the FTTx field, 25G PON and 50G PON deployments will climb starting in 2025, offsetting the decline in 10G PON sales. About the wireless market, fronthaul upgrades to advanced 5G and 6G networks using 50G and 100G components will also begin in 2025-2026.

• LC: Lidar Market is Recovering, but Many Challenges Remain

Sales of lidars for the automotive market are expected to increase by 50% in 2023, exceeding $600 million. Chinese manufacturers of electric vehicles (EVs) are starting to deploy lidars on many of their models and scaling up production.

LC expects that sales of lidars for ADAS applications in Light Vehicles (LV) will result in rapidly growing sales in 2023-2028, as shown in the figure below. Deployments of lidars in Chinese EVs will lead the market growth. Robotaxis and autonomous truck will remain niche markets even by 2028.

• Optical communication electronic chip: market decline in 2023, but will still grow in the future

According to the ICC report, the market trend of electronic chips in the telecommunications market will decline significantly in 2023, mainly due to the decline in demand for optical access networks, but the situation is expected to rebound in 2024.

In addition, the data communications market demand will remain strong in the next five years, mainly benefiting from the strong demand for high-speed optical modules, especially the promotion of 400G and above optical modules and AI/ML. However, the demand for low-speed electronic chips may face a decline, mainly affected by the overall speed upgrade of the application market.

• Omdia: South Korea’s 5G subscriptions exceed 30 million and are expected to exceed 4G in 2024

5G subscriptions rose 25% year-over-year (YoY) to reach 30.6 million in 2Q23, accounting for 38% of overall mobile subscriptions. Based on Omdia's forecast, 5G subscriptions are expected to overtake 4G by 2024 and reach 69 million in 2028.