Market forecast predicts growing connector consumption

Who will lead in global consumption of electronic and optical fiber connectors in 2010? According to a study by ElectroniCast (www.electronicast.com), the global market consumption of electronic and optical fiber connectors used in LANs/ premises private data networks was $622.3 million in 2000. The consumption value will increase at an annual growth rate of 13.3% per year over the next five years to $1.16 billion in 2005, with strongly rising quantity growth partially offset by declining average prices. Over the 2005-2010 period, the consumption value will reach $2.8 billion. North America led in global consumption with 63% or $392 million in 2000.

ElectroniCast senior researcher analyst Peter T. Jewett explains, "North American consumption will be driven by the continuing trend to higher data rate input/output per machine, growing complexity, and increasing node counts of LANs. The fastest growth in LAN/premises private data network interconnect cable consumption will occur in South America and the rest of the world regions, stimulated by favorable national economic policies and the trend toward higher network bandwidth requirements."

The findings are based on interviews of re searchers and other experts in the product field. ElectroniCast analyzes production costs, and thus minimum pricing, of the connectors at various quantity levels to determine the projected numbers.

The global consumption value of optical fiber connectors used in LAN/ premises private data networks will increase from $242 million in 2000 to more than $2.1 billion in 2010. In 2000, North America held a dominant 70% of global consumption value of LAN/ premises private data network optical fiber connectors. This forecast includes regions other than North America. Accumulated data is divided into subsets according to region. For each product subset, the base year consumed quantity and its average per-unit price is estimated, based on interviews of both customers and suppliers. This is repeated for each succeeding year of the forecasts.

Quantity is multiplied to obtain the value forecasts. The quantity and value forecasts are then summed to obtain the total forecast for each region. European connector usage value was in a distant second place, and Japan plus other Far East countries in turn represented less than 10% of the global usage. Over the next decade, optical fiber data connector deployment in Europe and Japan will proceed more rapidly than in North America, to represent almost half, or 42% of the global consumption of optical fiber LAN/premises private data network interconnect connectors by 2010.