Worldwide structured cablingmarket to grow to $29.1 billion

The worldwide market for structured cabling systems (SCS) is forecast to grow from $15.3 billion this year, at a compound annual growth rate of 13.7%, to $29.1 billion by 2013.

On a global basis, the SCS market is at different stages of development, depending upon the country’s economic situations and propensity to deploy technology to drive their economy—especially being “network ready.” This “network-ready” metric is especially useful in evaluating the country and its region to deploy new technology, including newcabling systems.

To evaluate the global SCS market, we segmented the world into fivegeographical segments:

• Americas
• Western Europe
• Eastern Europe
• Asia/Pacific and
• Rest of the world (ROW)

Americas. The U.S. dominates the Americas market, driven currently by data center cabling. It is projected that, in a few years, the U.S. market will be driven by theaddition of Internet Protocol (IP) subnets to the existing core network. We especially believe that Voice over IP applications will be a significant factor for the U.S. market growth three to five years from now.

Western Europe. The Western European market, being typicallyseveral years behind the U.S.cabling deployments, is still suffering from the effects of market saturation that impacted the U.S. market is the 1990s. In the future, it is expected that market growth will resume, primarily driven by data center installations. Scandinavian countries, such as Denmark and Sweden, offer the largest market growth opportunities in this region of the world.

While other regions of the world may be growing at a faster clip, the Americas region will continue to be the largest single geographic market over the next five years.

Eastern Europe. The Eastern European region is still an evolving market for SCS deployment, but its growth is limited by its economic and technology situations. In the future, this region will be impacted by market saturation, but the impact is not expected to be as severe as it has been in the U.S. market. In terms of individual country opportunities, Russia offers the largest market but may be limited due to geopolitical considerations. Outside of Russia, Poland,Romania, and the Czech Republic are attempting to foster their use of technology to drive their economies, but are still behind the more-developed countries in the Americas and Western Europe.

Asia/Pacific. The region, which includes the Middle East, is for the most part reaching marketsaturation in the more technology-motivated countries, such as Israel. We see a heavy deployment of fiber cabling within this region. Besides the large developing markets, such as China and India, market growth can be expected from those countries in which technology is being deployed to compete in the world market.Notably, this includes Hong Kong and Singapore. In addition, the oil-rich Arab countries continue to expand beyond oil to grow new businesses, including massive construction of new hotels and business skyscrapers, providing additional market opportunities.

Rest of the World (ROW). This region is still evolving, with many countries (such as those in Africa) behind even the Eastern European market in deploying new technology. There are a few exceptions of countries offering a market opportunityin this region—notably, Icelandand New Zealand.

FRANK MURAWSKI is president of FTM Consulting (www.ftmconsultinginc.com). This article summarizes the findings in FTM’s most recent study, “Worldwide Structured Cabling Systems Market.”