Exceptionally strong IMS equipment spending saw the overall service provider VoIP equipment market beat its traditional trend of a down first quarter, growing 1% to $715 million over Q4 2011.
Globally the overall market was up by 18% in Q1 2012 from Q1 2011 despite continued declines in legacy trunk media gateway and
softswitch sales. This growth is driven by strong sales in IMS core equipment, session border controller and voice application server equipment.
In the first quarter of 2012, Alcatel-Lucent more than doubled its service provider VoIP and IMS revenue and market share, placing the company at the top of worldwide market share, ahead of Huawei and GENBAND.
The quarter was led by North America, with carrier VoIP and IMS spending up 18% quarter-over-quarter and up 76% year-over-year. Infonetics projects that the number of mobile and fixed-line subscribers on IMS networks is to grow 42% in 2012 to over 250 million worldwide.
“While commercial VoLTE services have yet to launch, this is a taste of what is to come as operators push forward over the next 5+ years. That said, large equipment orders will be sporadic and the IMS market will continue to be lumpy,” said Diane Myers, principal analyst for VoIP and IMS at Infonetics Research.
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