Free Jan. 14th Webinar: Preview of "Active Optical Cables Market Report 2010" from IGI

Tom Rossi Independent Consultant & Author

Information Gatekeepers, Inc. has announced a free webinar to preview the new "Active Optical Cables Market Report 2010." The webinar, with report author and AOC expert Tom Rossi, will discuss core AOC cable OEMs as well as their underlying material suppliers (i.e., fiber-optic cable, VCSELs, optical detector/PIN diodes, and connectors) and customers, outline the changes in projections from last year's report, as well as display new projections and new technologies on the market.

The Active Optical Cables Market Report 2010 is available for pre-publication purchase at a 20% discount. This years report is now expanded to include Intel's new Light Peak initiative! As with our previous reports, we provide a wealth of information and illustrative charts covering many aspects of the active optical cable business. Readers will find plenty of details related to:

1. Overall market revenue as well as breakout by covered application and interface segments
   
   
2. Total number of cables by segment, including changes in relative rank over the five-year period covered in this report
   
   
3. Optical element (light source and detectors) volume and breakout by speed, both in individual application segments and across the overall market
   
   
4. Similar information related to the other key elements such as optical fibers, cable jackets, and connectors.

The collection of details in this report will be useful to both the cable OEMs and their core suppliers. Certain sectors that are strong in the earlier years covered by this report will give way to newer segments that develop greater volumes in years 3-5. The bus interface focus has been modified slightly from last year. InfiniBand, HDMI, USB, and DisplayPort are still included in the analysis. The report includes new markets such as SAS and CXP. Forecasts for DisplayPort AOC have been reduced dramatically, due in part to overall sluggishness reported by other research companies by the major PC OEMs supporting this alternative to HDMI for computer display links. Light Peak, the new Intel optical initiative announced at their San Francisco Developers Forum in September and supported by Sony, has been added to the overall report mix, and is expected to be a core part of our reports over the coming years.

While Light Peak does not appear to be an active cable technology per se, it does bear close scrutiny for several reasons:

1. With Intel pushing this technology, it has a strong likelihood of eventual success in the general marketplace, especially with backing from Sony (Apple is also rumored to be interested).
   
   
2. The announcement revealed certain technical elements used heavily by AOCs. Should Intel prove successful in driving their Light Peak to volume markets, it could easily have great impact on overall AOC cost structures due to greatly increased economies of scale.
   
   
3. Light Peak is aimed at carrying multiple digital data protocols across a single fiber using standardized connections on each end of their cable. Other buses have registered multiple protocol support in the past (FCoE, Ethernet over HDMI, USB rumored via DisplayPort), which could lead into an ugly market confrontation in the near future such as we saw with the Blu-ray vs. HD DVD head-on collision two years ago.

For more information about this webinar or report, contact:

Dr. Hui Pan
Information Gatekeepers Inc.
1340 Soldiers Field Road, Suite 2
Boston, MA 02135,
USA Tel: 617-782-5033,
Fax: 617-782-5735
hpan@igigroup.com