In spite of an economic downturn, worldwide service provider voice over IP equipment revenue totaled $595 million in Q3 2009 – just a slight decline from the previous quarter.

 

That’s the verdict issued by Campbell, Calif., market research firm Infonetics Research in its third-quarter (Q309) “Service Provider VoIP Equipment” and “Subscribers and IMS Equipment and Subscribers” market share and forecast reports.

 

According to Infonetics Research (News - Alert), 2009 has shown an accelerated migration of service providers to native IP, leaving behind TDM-related equipment, which has taken a toll on traditional trunk media gateways and softswitches. Additionally, there is a continued migration by service providers from VoIP services to IMS networks: Infonectics expects IMS equipment will grow to $1.6 billion by 2013.

 

“The service provider next-gen voice equipment market continues to hold steady, with worldwide revenue in the third quarter roughly matching that of the second quarter,” said Diane Myers, directing analyst for service provider VoIP and IMS at Infonetics Research. “This stability is a very good sign for the industry, which has seen a tumultuous year. We are still expecting about a 30 percent drop in worldwide revenue for the overall 2009 year compared to 2008.”

 

Infonetics’ quarterly service provider VoIP report provides worldwide and regional market share, market size, forecasts through 2013, and analysis for VoIP subscribers and media processing and call control carrier VoIP equipment, including high-, mid-, and low-density trunk media gateways, SBCs, media servers, softswitches, and voice application servers.

 

The report tracks Acme Packet, Alcatel-Lucent (News - Alert), AudioCodes, BroadSoft, Dialogic, Ditech, Cisco, Comverse (NetCentrex), Ericsson, Gallery IP Telephony, GENBAND, Huawei, Iperia, Italtel, MERA, Metaswitch Networks, Movius, NextPoint (News - Alert), Nokia Siemens, Nortel, Personeta, RadiSys, Sonus, Sylantro, Tekelec, Thomson Cirpack, Ubiquity, UTStarcom, Veraz, Verso, Xener and others.

 

Additonally, Infonetics expects that key operators in the Asia Pacific -- such as NTT DoCoMo, Softbank, SK Telecom (News - Alert) and KT – will continue to push on enhanced mobile services over their IMS networks, including mobile IM, video sharing and PoC (push to talk over cellular).