Mr Varges, Part of the confusion of market share comes about due to the fact that legacy SONET equipment is often lumped in together with DWDM as both are optical networking technologies.
The former technology is rapidly approaching obsolescence and the latter causing same. Compounding the confusion is the fact that DWDM is a displacing technology that is designed to SONET protocol standards, ie OC-48, OC-192 etc. Very few people understand the difference, unless they are industry players, very savvy investors, or technically astute. Journalists are typically not all that well informed because they have such a broad base to cover, and have deadlines to meet.
Recall my posts on the IBD writeup about a month ago, where the author lumped both technologies together and indicated Nortel owned the OC-192 market. This would be a true statement when applied to legacy SONET gear, otherwise it is misleading. When the apples and oranges are added, it makes the purveyor of apples and oranges look much better than the purveyor of oranges. Nortel, Lucent, and Alcatel vs Ciena, for example.
Perhaps these figures are broken out in the marketing studies conducted by RHK, Pioneer and Del O'ro. But I haven't seen them. Maybe Lightreading can shed some light on the subject. It is cause for concern, as market share is a figure of merit.
What I dearly would like to see are market share numbers broken out by category. Engineers call this normalization. I want the normalized numbers. Anybody have them?
Regards,
Jack Hutchison
|
