Active Optical Cables continue to ramp while Embedded Optical Module road still bumpy

WASHINGTON, DC--(Marketwired - December 21, 2016) - As a practical low-cost alternative for pluggable modules, the market for AOCs has now moved beyond HPC clusters and Ethernet applications now dominate unit shipments whether connecting servers to switches or between switches. Mega datacenter builders have discovered the economics of deploying AOCs within equipment rows. LightCounting thinks the future for AOCs is bright with even stronger growth than our year-ago forecast, reaching $710 million by 2021. As server connections increase from 10G to 25G and 50G, AOCs become an attractive alternative to Direct Attach Copper in some large installations.

Even consumer applications bode well for AOCs with new USB-C ports on most computers. The reach of 40G Thunderbolt 3 over copper is just two feet.

In contrast, the EOM market has always been a collection of niches which has made it lumpy and large-order sensitive. LightCounting thinks the long-term future for EOMs is bright, but the next two years will be soft. As some EOM projects fade, new ones are getting started. The long-term future for EOMs is bright, serving applications that would stretch the reach of copper and bode well for deeper penetration into large systems.

We predict that the combined EOM market will grow from $84 million in 2016 to $208 million by 2021.

For makers of AOCs and EOMs, these markets are a complex mix of product configurations and applications. LightCounting's combined AOC-EOM Report and Forecast sorts it all out and explains what's happening and why. Seventeen categories of products are individually tracked, forecasted and mapped into five application segments: HPC, core routing, data center, optical backplanes and mil/aero/other applications.

For more information on the report, please go to http://www.LightCounting.com/AOC.cfm