The second quarter of 2006 is proving to be profitable for today’s VoIP/IMS providers, according to two reports published by Infonetics Research. These studies highlight significant gains in both the service provider VoIP/IMS market and the enterprise telephony market.

 

According to "Service Provider Next Gen Voice and IMS Equipment," worldwide service provider next generation voice and IMS equipment revenue is expected to more than double between 2005 and 2009, from $2.5 billion to $5.8 billion. The market is up 6 percent  to $772.3 million in the second quarter of 2006, following a 6 percent decline in the first quarter.

"It was a good quarter for carrier next gen voice, with all segments showing gains except session border controllers (SBCs), which were down a bit for the quarter, but up significantly year-over-year," said Stéphane Téral, principal analyst for service provider VoIP at Infonetics Research.

 

Infonetics' "Enterprise Telephony" report shows Cisco had a record quarter in the worldwide PBX/KTS market, which grew 3 percent sequentially to $2.2 billion (10 percent higher than a year ago). The company’s huge quarter for trunk media gateways – an increase of 84 percent – has enabled Cisco to take the lead spot from Sonus in the second quarter of this year.

 

Says Matthias Machowinski, directing analyst for enterprise telephony at Infonetics Research: "We expected Cisco to do well since it was the end of their fiscal year, but they blew right past our expectations, for the first time breaking 1 million lines per quarter. Nortel (News - Alert) had a great quarter, too, while the other major players were more or less flat. As a consequence, worldwide market share positions were shuffled around this quarter, with Nortel shooting to the top for IP PBX line share (up from 3rd last quarter), and Cisco jumping from 5th to 2nd."

 

Driving this strong annual growth in the carrier next generation voice market is the trunk media gateway and softswitch segments, each of which will top $1.3 billion in 2006. In the meantime, the session border controller market is forecast to jump 84 percent between 2005 and 2006.

Cindy Waxer is a Toronto-based freelance journalist specializing in business and technology. She has written for publications including TIME, Fortune Small Business, Business 2.0, Computerworld, Canadian Business, and Workforce Management. To see more of her articles, please visit Cindy Waxer’s columnist page.