The Optical Transport market outside of Asia Pacific improved in the year, following a momentary slow down caused by the pandemic in 2020,” said Jimmy Yu, Vice President at Dell’Oro Group. “It was a noticeably strong year for optical systems in all the other regions. In fact, with the exception of Asia Pacific, optical revenue in 2021 surpassed the pre-pandemic levels in each of the regions.

MCN revenues for 2021 were lower than expected due to an unexpectedly poor fourth quarter performance.  The revenues for 4Q 2021 were lower than in 4Q 2020. The last time that happened was in 4Q 2017,” stated Dave Bolan, Research Director at Dell’Oro Group. “The poor performance in 4Q 2021 was due to negative year-over-year revenue performance for the China region. The performance for the rest of the world was almost flat but still negative and obviously was not enough to offset the decline in China.

The RAN market continues to show remarkable resilience to a confluence of external factors,” said Stefan Pongratz, Vice President at Dell’Oro Group. “Even with the slower growth in the fourth quarter due partly to more challenging comparison, RAN prospects remain healthy and the overall RAN market is on track to record a fifth consecutive year of growth in 2022

“Demand for microwave equipment was very robust in 2021,” stated Jimmy Yu, Vice President at Dell’Oro Group. “However, with the component shortage, there lacked sufficient supply to keep up with the growing demand. As a result, many microwave vendors were unable to fulfill their orders by the end of the year and had to push off delivery into 2022. We estimate that had there been enough supply, the total Microwave Transmission market would have grown one percent higher,” added Yu.