3/3/2009 -- Many market segments were hard hit by the worsening of the economic crisis late last year. But not the optical networking space, which had a pretty good Q4, all things considered.

That's the upshot of a new study from market watcher Infonetics Research, which said that whatever else one might say about the networking industry as a whole, the optical space was a-OK.

"The pressure to upgrade equipment is still there, because mobile and data traffic continue to mount, and the number of mobile broadband subscribers continues to grow rapidly," said Michael Howard, Infonetics' principal analyst for optical, routing, switching and Ethernet, in a statement. "The issue now for the telecom industry in general, and the optical market in particular, is whether service providers will increase their spending in the latter half of 2009 to fulfill the guidance they've already given for the full year."

That issue, according to Howard, is "a big unknown." What is known is that global optical hardware sales grew by 5 percent on a year-over-year basis to $4 billion in the fourth quarter of 2008. That was slower than expected, to be sure, but not half bad, considering both the economic crisis and the devaluation of the euro versus the U.S. dollar, Infonetics said.

For the year, Infonetics reported, optical sales were up by 8 percent -- a tally that was also affected by euro-versus-dollar currency devaluation -- spurred by "traffic pressures, long haul buildouts, WDM investments" and, significantly, strong results posted by Chinese giant Huawei. Last year was the first year since 2003 in which optical revenues failed to grow at a double-digit clip, Infonetics said.

Elsewhere, customers continue to purchase more WDM than SDH/SONET equipment. More than half (54 percent) of all North American optical equipment dollars were spent on WDM technologies; 46 percent were earmarked for SONET/SDH. Huawei made huge gains during 2008, nearly catching up with market leader Alcatel-Lucent; it grew its global revenues by 39 percent, narrowing Alcatel-Lucent's lead to just 3 percent. --Stephen Swoyer