Telecom Lead Asia: Huawei is leading the VoIP and IMS space based on market share in the first quarter of 2013.
Infonetics Research says the other two top players in the VoIP and IMS market are Alcatel-Lucent and Genband.
Alcatel-Lucent had a strong quarter. Other vendors such as Acme Packet, AudioCodes, Ericsson, Metaswitch and ZTE posted solid revenue growth in Q1.
North America is the only region to post quarter-over-quarter growth in the market, up 26 percent in Q1, benefitting from LTE-related activity and network transformation projects.
Meanwhile, Asia Pacific declined nearly 1/3 in the same timeframe, said Infonetics Research.
The total global carrier voice over IP (VoIP) and IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) equipment market fell 11 percent in Q1 2013 from Q4 2012, to $712 million, due to a drop in sales of legacy equipment and voice application servers.
For the 1st time, sales of IMS equipment exceeded those of next-generation voice equipment.
In 2012, IMS equipment made up just over 40 percent of total VoIP and IMS revenue, offsetting overall declines in legacy softswitch and trunk media gateways. The Caribbean and Latin America region (CALA) posted the strongest growth of all regions, increasing 37 percent.
“Service provider session border controllers (SBCs) had a stellar first quarter, passing the $100-million mark to hit an all-time high for a single quarter. Operators are working on complex network migration and voice-over-LTE deployment plans, with sales cycles happening at different times for different elements, and SBCs benefitted from this trend in the first quarter,” said Diane Myers, principal analyst for VoIP, UC, and IMS at Infonetics Research.
Infonetics Research expects a patchy year ahead while the industry waits for VoLTE networks in North America to kick in. Network transformation and VoLTE projects are ongoing of course, but this year’s equipment orders are not likely to match the magnitude of last year’s.
On 19, February 2013, Myers said that it is early days for IMS equipment and applications for LTE, but a handful of operators are placing orders that are positively impacting revenue.
