With the official issuance of 5G licenses by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the optical communications market has drawn strong attention from the market. At the 21st China International Optoelectronic Exposition (CIOE 2019), 2,000 optoelectronic companies participated in the exhibition, focusing on many optoelectronic products and related hot products and technologies. At the same time, related concept stocks opened up, as of September 9th, ZTE, Cambridge Technology and other industries have a daily limit.
Securities Times·e reporter interviewed a number of listed company exhibitors found that 400G and other high-frequency optical modules have gradually stepped into the mass production competition stage from the simple new product release competition, major manufacturers have rushed to rush, optimistic about the industry recovery trend in the second half and next year In the later period, the domestic industry will not rule out the reshuffle; in contrast, the competition in the optical fiber market is still saturated, and relevant manufacturers will put their vision into the data center market.
400G optical module all-round competition
At the exhibition, Securities Times·e reporter noticed that Cambridge Technology demonstrated 400G QSFP56-DD optical module products and corresponding eye diagrams, and 200G FR optical modules were also displayed. Huang Gang, chairman of the company, told reporters that the company’s 400G products have been commercialized and have been delivered to small-scale trials by North American customers.
It should be one of the fastest-growing companies in the industry, with low cost, low power consumption and low latency. specialty.
“The 400G product was released a year ago!” Cambridge Tech field staff told reporters that it is about to enter mass production. The company also exhibited a series of optical module products such as 5G forward/return transmission.
According to reports, 5G wireless networks need to use 10G and 25G optical modules with transmission distances of 300 meters, 10 kilometers, 20 kilometers and 40 kilometers. At the same time, the use of bidirectional BIDI and wavelength division multiplexing technology to solve the practical application process Insufficient fiber resources.
According to the industry media C114 report, Guangxun Technology held a promotion meeting during the exhibition, and the 400G related modules for the data center market were mainly used for the next generation data center architecture. It is expected that in 2020, commercial scale will be formed in domestic data centers.
Zhongji Xuchuang also exhibited and displayed some products. According to the introduction, the mass production of 400G optical module products is in normal progress.The data center business is mainly for overseas customers such as North America.At the same time, it also makes layouts in 5G pre-transmission, middle transmission and backhaul.
Wide layout of 5G front light transmission module
The transmission rate of the optical module field is also rapidly updated.
At this exhibition, the China Information and Communication Research Institute affiliated with the Terai Lab, Tencent, Huawei, Xinhua III, Hisense Broadband, Guangxun Technology, Sumitomo Electric, Lixun Precision, Shanyi Electric and other 9 industry organizations, customers and manufacturers Established the 800G Pluggable MSA Working Group to promote the development of industry specifications for 800G pluggable optical modules.
Dr. Vladimir Kozlov, founder and CEO of LightCounting, a well-known market research company in the optical field, predicts that cloud data center operators need to deploy 800G optical modules to keep up with data traffic growth in 2023-2024. Most 800G will be pluggable modules.
In addition, in the field of 5G pre-light transmission module, Mingpu Opto-Magnet exhibited the company’s 5G pre-transmission, data center and FTTH series of products and solutions for 5G commercial range.According to reports, the company lasted for 9 months of research and development, the first to become a full range of 25G one-stop direct mining suppliers, the company’s products can enable customers to achieve 100%-200% increase in fiber-optic resource utilization rate of the target 5G forward transmission network.
At this fair, Jin Xinnuo exhibited 25G low-cost tunable color light module for 5G prequel. According to reports, this product is the first in the industry and fully open the intelligent era of 5G prequel.
Chairman of the Board of Directors of Huang Xinnuo, Huang Changhua, guest of the Securities Times and e-investigation of the 5G layout, said that the company and the top domestic and foreign operators, equipment vendors and antenna vendors launched Design In mode, forward-looking device innovation for 5G systems and devices. It provides a full range of complex high-performance signal interconnection products and corresponding customized services such as RF transmission, low-frequency transmission, optical transmission, high-speed transmission, power transmission, PCB and chip modules.
The SDF staff said that the current fiber industry is still in the “green and yellow” period from 4G to 5G.The company will expand along the industry chain and will do 5G prequel, which is relatively difficult to pass and pass back.Mainly doing 25G and 100G markets, 400G is expected to start again next year.
The optical module market will usher in shuffling
According to LightCounting data, the global optical module market will reach 16 billion US dollars in 2024, and the proportion of Ethernet optical module market will increase from 45% in 2016 to 64% in 2024. With the 5G commercial, the pre-transmission module will be on a large scale; in the data center market, the 100G optical module has the largest market share, and the 400G began to increase in 2019.
This market outlook has also attracted many participants. At the same time forum of the exhibition, the experts estimated that there are about 300-400 domestic optical module suppliers, and the competition is particularly fierce. The reporter noted that the main optical fiber companies such as Changfei Optical Fiber Co., Ltd. have also set foot in the data center and laid out the optical module market. At the same time, optical communication products. The price has dropped significantly.
Huatai Securities pointed out that the demand for 100G digital light modules is strong from 2017 to 2018, but due to the introduction of new technologies and the destocking of downstream customers, the price of the whole number of light-passing modules has dropped more. LightCounting pointed out that the standard average price of digital pass-through modules has dropped from 6+ USD/Gbps in 2016 to US$3/Gbps in 2018. It is expected that the price decline will slow down in 2020-2024, and the price of standardized products will drop slightly in 2024. Above the level of $1/Gbps.
According to Wind statistics, the median growth rate of net profit of listed companies in the first half of this year decreased by about 2% compared with the same period of last year.
Some exhibitors further told reporters that 5G construction has also brought fierce competition in the optical module industry, and it is expected that there will be a round of reshuffle in the future. However, the technical route for overseas giants to upgrade their next-generation products has not been unified. For example, Amazon prefers a 400G product with a higher transfer rate, and Facebook builds a new high-density 100G switch fabric, which places more emphasis on network stability.
On the other hand, affected by Sino-US trade frictions and macroeconomic downturns, overseas data center giants have reduced their purchasing willingness last year, and their hardware update intentions have declined. Technology replacement will take some time, but the market speed of cutting into 400G optical modules will be faster than 100G.
400G is expected to usher in commercial scale
Exhibitors still have confidence in the market recovery. Tianfeng Securities analysis report pointed out that with the stabilization and recovery of cloud computing vendors’ capital expenditures, the entire industrial chain from data centers, network equipment to high-speed optical modules will be promoted.
In addition, the country is also actively promoting the development of the big data industry. On September 4th, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the “Guiding Opinions on the Development of Industrial Big Data (Draft for Comment)”, and proposed to build the National Industrial Internet Big Data Center by 2025, cultivate international advanced level industrial big data solution providers, and create countries. Specific targets such as the new industrialization industry demonstration base.
Many listed companies also indicated that orders will resume in the second quarter of this year, optimistic about the market growth in the second half and the coming year. Zhongji Xu Chuang said that since the second quarter, thanks to some key customers’ demand for 100G and other products began to pick up, 400G product shipments began to increase gradually, and 5G prequel products began to be delivered in batches. The company’s sales revenue and net profit were compared. The first quarter of the ring has steadily improved.
Huang Xinhua, chairman of Jinxinnuo, also said that the performance in the first half of this year was not satisfactory, and the net profit of both revenues declined. For the purchase adjustment of special product customers, there is still a certain opportunity to make up the orders in the second half of the year. At the same time, the company is also preparing local chemical plants in Thailand. , better serve overseas customers.
In addition, the operator stated in public that the 5G optical module has reached the time node of commercial scale. According to reports, Jin Xinnuo wireless and optical network product management team general manager Fu Wei revealed that the operator has launched a number of multiple bidding, the average size of each tens of millions of yuan, considerable; expected next year’s procurement scale will be further amplification.
Huatai Securities pointed out that according to the correlation between optical module upgrade and switch chip upgrade, 400G is expected to usher in commercial scale in 2020. According to LightCounting’s data, according to the 100G time period analogy, it is expected that by 2020, 400G is expected to usher in commercial scale.