In conjunction with the accelerating pace of 4G LTE around the world, there has been a nice uptick in the Voice over LTE (VoLTE) equipment market, according to the latest report from Infonetics (News - Alert) Research.  The research firm found that the VoLTE equipment market and associated IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) equipment market grew 12 percent in 2014, to $4.2 billion. The push is coming according to Infonetics, “As operators continue to transform their networks to be simpler, more cost effective, and able to offer next gen voice services, chiefly voice over LTE (VoLTE)."

The early edition Service Provider VoIP and IMS Equipment and Subscribers report contains vendor market share, forecasts and preliminary analysis for the global carrier VoIP and IMS market for the fourth quarter of 2014 (4Q14) and the full-year 2014. It shows that 2014 was a year in which the promise of VoLTE and IMS was starting to gain traction as operators got serious about deployment. It also highlights which vendors are benefitting from operator investments.

“The service provider VoIP and IMS market posted solid growth in 2014 due to VoLTE deployments and network transformation projects. We feel positive about 2015 with VoLTE activity continuing and voice over WiFi (News - Alert) (VoWiFi) beginning to ramp,” Diane Myers, principal analyst for VoIP, UC, and IMS at Infonetics Research, said.

A few of the report highlights are noteworthy.  Infonetics cites the following that are good news for virtually every part of the markets. They include:

• In addition to a healthy annual gain, the carrier VoIP and IMS equipment market saw strong quarterly growth, up 21 percent sequentially in 4Q14, to $1.2 billion, with IMS comprising 58 percent of total sales;
• Market segments posting solid year-over-year growth in 4Q 2014 include trunk media gateways, session border controllers (SBCs), softswitches, voice application servers, call session control function (CSCF) and media gateway control function (MGCF);
• To date, 15 operators in the U.S., South Korea, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, Romania and Denmark have launched commercial VoLTE services, including AT&T, Verizon (News - Alert), KT, NTT DoCoMo and TDC;
• All major geographical regions posted growth in 2014, with CALA (Caribbean and Latin America) up 42 percent over 2013 due to the expansion of fixed-line VoIP networks;
• EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) growth was driven by VoLTE-related equipment sales kicking in ahead of 2015 service launches;
• The standout vendor in 4Q 2014 and for the full-year 2014 is Huawei (News - Alert), which outpaced the carrier VoIP and IMS market, taking 26 percent of worldwide revenue for the year;
• All the large network equipment vendors — Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Huawei and Nokia (News - Alert) Networks — are benefiting from VoLTE-related activity;
• Infonetics forecasts the worldwide service provider VoIP and IMS equipment market to grow to $4.6 billion in 2019.

The best news in the report is the outlook for 2015 and beyond. We are still in the very early stages of VoLTE service launches in every region. For a variety of reasons, not the least of which are operator desires to add VoLTE to their portfolios as a means for competing more aggressively with OTTs, getting ready for the launches is a clear priority which spells opportunity for all of the vendors in the space.