LightCounting称光模块市场Q1创纪录、Acacia与中际旭创增速超过200%

LightCounting releases Q2 Quarterly Market Update – June 2026
Q1 2026 was the best quarter for the optical transceiver market since LightCounting started collecting data back in 2004. We estimate the sales of transceivers and AOCs at around $10 billion – up more than 90% from Q1 2025. As illustrated in the figure below, market growth is starting to look truly exponential, as the growth rate has remained above 70% for more than a year.
Our final count for sales of optical transceivers and related products in 2025 stands at $26.8 billion, up 74% from 2024. We were hoping to see some moderation of the growth in 2026, conforming to our soft-landing forecast scenario, but the exponential market trajectory seems relentless. Supply constrains are easing now and this adds gasoline to the fire, not to mention the sky-high spending of the leading cloud companies.
Many companies set new records in Q1 2026, led by Innolight – up 207% y-o-y, as we reported in our early results research note, released on May 14th. Acacia’s record also clearly stands out. Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins commented, “Acacia business had its strongest quarter to date with more than $1 billion in orders in Q3 (calendar Q1) and it is on track to grow over 200% year-over-year in fiscal year '26 (ending in July 2026). Acacia is leading the coherent pluggable optics market, and we see strong momentum across this business.” He also added that “the Acacia business is on fire.” We (LightCounting) have never seen 200% growth in the coherent transceiver market, not since Acacia’s early days in this market.
This report includes historical data and estimates for Q2 2026 on shipments of coherent DWDM ports, including 800ZR/ZR+, which started selling in the end of last year. The ramp in 800ZR/ZR+ has to be phenomenal to achieve 200% growth in Acacia’s business and our estimates for Q2 2026 may be low.
Among many factors that propelled Acacia and Innolight to 200% growth, excellence in supply chain management is really important now, as the industry is hobbled by shortages. Acacia outperformed the competition during the previous cycle, when demand picked up during the COVID shutdown and its supply chain management excellence was a key factor.
Ciena and Nokia are not standing still and both companies improved their supply chain management since COVID. Nokia’s CEO Justin Hotard said that for this year he sees the momentum “on the back of our 800G pluggables and the associated line systems and platforms.” Ciena’s CEO Gary Smith also commented on “strong demand from hyperscalers for our 400G and 800G pluggables, and we remain on track to more than double our pluggable revenue from 2025.” More than doubling may fall below 200%, but it is still remarkable.
A “hidden” factor in Acacia’s success may be its business in selling silicon photonic optical engines to the broader transceiver market where Acacia competes with Intel, Sicoya, Silith and Xphor. According to our recently published report “Silicon Photonics, LPO/LRO and CPO/NPO”, sales of silicon photonics chips will be up 110% in 2026. Most of these chips will be manufactured by Innolight and other transceiver vendors internally (at foundries), but large customers require more diversification. Merchant suppliers of silicon photonics chips may see higher growth in their business, probably reaching close to 200%. There is a significant level of activity in NPO development, which is hard to quantify in terms of sales, but it certainly boosts demand for silicon photonics chips.
Stay tuned for an upcoming LightCounting’s CPO/NPO conference planned for July 15th. A formal announcement will be sent out next week.
LightCounting's Quarterly Market Update reports are designed to provide an easy-to-digest snapshot of optical transceiver growth trends, backed up with detailed quarter-by-quarter sales data collected via LightCounting's proprietary vendor survey. Performance metrics and commentary for top-tier telecom operators, cloud companies, network equipment makers, optical component and semiconductor vendors are also included.
The Quarterly Market Update report is available to subscribers at: https://www.lightcounting.com/login.