Optical networking vendors Ciena, Fujitsu, Infinera, and Cisco continue to dominate and drive that market in North and Latin America, which are the two regions that are also leading global growth, according to a new report from Dell’Oro Group.

The research firm found that those four vendors controlled nearly 80% of revenues in the Americas at the end of the first quarter. The results echoed similar numbers Dell’Oro Group reported for all of 2021.

That regional strength is particularly important as the Americas posted strong year-over-year revenue growth. North America-based optical transport revenue surged 25% in Q1, while Latin America reported a 19% increase.

Europe, Asia Pacific, and China also posted mid-single-digit declines in segment revenues, which tempered overall market growth. That regional lag combined with component shortages and supply chain challenges cut overall market growth to just a few percentage points.

“Growth in Americas more than offset declines in other regions,” Jimmy Yu, VP at Dell’Oro Group, wrote in the report. “There was definitely strong demand for optical equipment in North America and Latin America, and vendors were able to deliver products even with component shortages and supply issues hampering them. Unfortunately, due to reasons that included the war in Ukraine, COVID lockdowns, supply problems, and weaker currency, optical revenue declined year-over-year in all of the other regions.”

Ciena CEO Gary Smith told investors earlier this year that the vendor had “managed” specific logistical challenges during its first fiscal quarter and that ongoing demand remained robust.

“Long-term secular demand is very strong, driven by the acceleration of cloud adoption and traffic growth and the desire to get higher capacity and more bandwidth closer to the end user,” he said, according to a transcript. “As a result, we're seeing extraordinary demand that is generating significant momentum in our business, including unprecedented levels of order bookings for our products and services. This is broad-based across our portfolio and geographic regions.”

Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins last month lumped its Acacia optical networking products into a handful of its services that performed “well” during its most recent quarter, noting that “our performance in these areas reflect the ongoing investments that our customers are making to rapidly digitize their organizations to deliver differentiated experiences.”

However, the executive also warned about supply chain uncertainty over the next couple of quarters.

“We believe that our revenue performance in the upcoming quarters is less dependent on demand and more dependent on the supply availability in this increasingly complex environment,” Robbins said.