Infonetics: Carrier VoIP equipment spend drops, IMS up

Infonetics released two reports Wednesday that show mixed fortune for VoIP equipment manufacturers. Infonetics notes that carrier VoIP equipment spending suffered its first year-over-year drop, falling 6 percent from 2007's record showing, but IMS deployments show promise to become a serious revenue driver by 2011.

The carrier VoIP equipment market has experienced double-digit annual revenue growth since 2002, but the streak was stopped in 2008 by the general economic downturn and a resulting decrease in capex. Diane Myers, directing analyst for Infonetics and author of the reports, said carrier capex on VoIP equipment likely won't rebound until 2010.

"We've seen indicators already that 2009 is going to be down from 2008," Myers said. "Capex should slowly increase in 2010, but as more VoIP deployments reach maturity, we don't expect the same pace of equipment revenue growth to resume. Carrier are refocusing some of the spend at other strategic locations."

One of those areas, IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) deployments, is growing rapidly, especially in European markets, with the segment up 94 percent in 2008. While fixed-line VoIP services are still the most popular applications delivered over IMS, Rich Communication Services will be an important part of the shift from fixed-line VoIP services to mobile networks and integration with standardized devices, according to the report.

Myers said the revenue total for IMS deployments is small currently, but will grow rapidly and become substantial in 2011 and beyond as mobile operators upgrade infrastructure.

Infonetics predicts IMS equipment sales will buck the general economic downturn and increase in 2009 and 2010. Currently, Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent, Nokia Siemens, NEC and Huawei are the core IMS equipment leaders by installations.

For more:
- see the Infonetics brief on the carrier VoIP report here [1]
- see the brief on IMS spend here [2]