VoIP, IMS equipment market down 2.1% in 2011

The carrier VoIP and IMS equipment market surged in the final quarter of 2011, as it often does at the end of the year, according to a report by Infonetics Research. However, on a year-over-year comparison, the market is down 2 percent in 2011 from 2010 as legacy trunk media gateway and softswitch sales drag on the overall market, the report indicates. Global sales of telecom service provider voice over IP (VoIP) and IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) equipment jumped 15.8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011 over the previous quarter, to USD 690 million. For the full year, the overall carrier VoIP and IMS market ended down 2.1 percent in 2011 over 2010, to USD 2.6 billion. After four years of annual declines, the global carrier VoIP and IMS equipment market is expected to reverse course and grow to ISD 3.8 billion by 2016, led by IMS sales. Growth in the overall market is being fueled by IMS network deployments as large service providers like AT&T, China Telecom, China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom and NTT undergo network transformation projects; cable operators such as Comcast migrate to new networks; and mobile operators such as Verizon Wireless launch IMS for their LTE networks. Vendors posting notable growth in the VoIP and IMS market in 2011 include Huawei, Genband, Alcatel-Lucent, and Acme Packet, the report shows. Huawei ended 2011 on top of the overall carrier VoIP and IMS market, just ahead of Genband. Regionally, North America and EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) had the strongest fourth quarter, posting carrier VoIP and IMS sales growth of more than 20 percent each. For the full year, Latin America was the big standout, with a 34 percent increase in carrier VoIP and IMS equipment sales, as VoIP activity in this region grows, particularly in Brazil and Mexico. The number of global IMS-based subscribers is forecast to grow from 177 million in 2011 to 610 million in 2016.