Sonus Networks saw its session border controller (SBC) business revenue grow at almost four times the pace of its competition, according to new research. The company's revenues increased 58.5 percent YoY, compared to a industry growth rate of 15.4 percent.

The company saw its share of the SBC service provider market grow to 19.6 percent in the fourth quarter.

Infonetics Research, in its "Service Provider VoIP and IMS Equipment and Subscribers" quarterly report said Sonus' growth in market share in the quarter was the highest in the industry, and it said its quarter-over-quarter revenue growth of 74.7 percent also was a sector leader.

"Our latest research confirms that Sonus' SBC business outpaced overall market growth," said Diane Myers, directing analyst for VoIP and IMS at Infonetics Research. "Capturing increasing share throughout 2011 has solidified Sonus' position as a leading contender in the SBC market."

The global SBC service provider market, meanwhile, is expected to grow 20 percent year-over-year through 2016, according to Infonetics.

For more:
- see this release

Related articles:
Acme Packet misses Q4 estimates, stock tumbles 10%
Axia TP taps Sonus Networks' NBS 5200 for SBC solution
Onvoy Voice Services employs Sonus for its network expansion
Sonus Networks names former Flarion creator Rajiv Laroia as new CTO

Despite increased activity in the carrier VoIP and IP Multimedia Subsystem equipment market in the fourth quarter, the segment tracked down for the year, according to a new report from Infonetics.

Click here to zoom in on this chart.

The research company, in its quarterly Service Provider VoIP and IMS Equipment and Subscribers report attributed the 2 percent slide to poor performance in legacy trunk media gateway and softswitch sales.

Analyst Diane Myers said she expects the market to rebound in 2012.

"We'll see this trend shift starting this year as the high-growth market segments--including IMS core equipment and session border controllers--become collectively large enough to offset the ongoing declines of the legacy products."

For the year, Infonetics said the global VoIP and IMS equipment market continued its four-year decline with revenues of $2.6 billion, off 2.1 percent, despite a fourth quarter bounce over the preceding period of nearly 16 percent to $690 million. North America and EMEA saw the strongest fourth quarter, posting carrier VoIP and IMS sales growth of more than 20 percent each, while Latin America was the big standout for the full year, with a 34 percent increase in carrier VoIP and IMS equipment sales. VoIP activity, particularly in Brazil and Mexico, is seeing strong growth in the region.

Myers said 2012 should be a bounce-back year, forecasting strong IMS sales globally that will bring the market to $3.8 billion, a 46 percent increase. She expects the number of global IMS-based subscribers to grow from 177 million in 2011 to 610 million in 2016.

IMS network deployments at large service providers like AT&T, China Telecom, China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom and NTT, which are undergoing network transformation projects, cable operators like Comcast that are migrating to new networks and wireless operators like Verizon Wireless that are launching IMS for their LTE networks, are driving the market's growth.

Among the vendors posting notable growth in the VoIP and IMS market in 2011 were Huawei, Genband, Alcatel-Lucent, and Acme Packet, with Huawei ending 2011 on top of the overall carrier VoIP and IMS market, just ahead of Genband.

For more:
- see this release

Related articles:
Tech M&A spending in 2011 rebounds; more growth seen in 2012
Report: Enterprises going mobile, seek UC, videoconferencing solutions
Report: UI, tech improvement will spur mVoIP, video calling adoption

The total service provider VoIP equipment market, including trunk media gateways, SBCs, media servers, softswitches, and voice application servers, decreased 9% from 2Q10 to 3Q10, to $511 million, according to Infonetics Research. While revenue is down for the quarter, shipments for almost all segments in the market are up sequentially.

Empirix has expanded its flagship Hammer XMS technology to provide end-to-end network monitoring for mobile core architectures. For mobile operators transitioning to all IP LTE networks, and traditional wire line operators or MSOs that are adding mobile service offerings, Hammer XMS "helps lower the cost of deploying and maintaining multi-protocol network architectures and ensures a more consistent customer experience," as the company claims.

A new Infonetics report claims the worldwide service provider Voice over IP equipment revenue totaled $595 million in Q3 09, which was only a slight decline from the last quarter.

Infonetics Research releases a quarterly report on service providers VoIP equipment and subscribers as well as IMS equipment and subscribers forecasts. Q3 saw the VoIP equipment market holding pretty strong as the report claims that the economic downturn spurred service providers to migrate to IP communications. Some interesting things to note were Cisco and Alcatel-Lucent posting double-digit percent increases in their media gateway revenue for Q3 and Nokia Siemens Networks posting 100% growth in softswitch sales for the same quarter.

On the IMS front worldwide revenue for core IMS equipment market declined 39 percent sequentially in Q3. But, the report claims that IMS equipment is experiencing healthy growth because of the continued adoption of VoIP services worldwide and service providers' migration of VoIP services to IMS networks. Ericsson may still be the leader in the IMS market overall, but Infonetics claims that it's seeing serious competition from Huawei, Nokia Siemens Networks and Alcatel-Lucent. Back in June, Infonetics reported that the global IMS market is expected to grow at a rapid pace for the next five years, and the predicted revenues will grow from around $200 million in 2008 to more than $2.5 billion in 2013. In this new report, they dialed down their assumptions saying they expect it to grow to $1.6 billion by 2013.

For more:
- see the release

Related articles
Infonetics: Carrier VoIP equipment spend drops, IMS up
Infonetics: VoIP equipment down, capex spending not so much
IMS equipment sales to grow 74% in 2009

Kineto announced what it claims to be the industry’s first software client that supports both VoLGA (voice over LTE via Generic Access) and IMS voice for LTE handsets.

According to the company, the new client enables handset manufacturers to easily integrate a combined VoLGA/IMS voice client and accelerate LTE handsets to market.

Infonetics Research released results from its IMS Plans: Global Service Provider Survey. It shows that 80% of Infonetics’ service provider respondents run fixed voice over IMS today or will by 2011 and that more than half of the service provider respondents plan to deploy video telephony and converged mobile/fixed-line services over the next 12–18 months.

Acme Packet has been selected by two European operators to provide them with IMS-based services.
Telefonica O2 Germany and Telnor Sweden are to use Acme Packet Net-Net 4000 series session border controllers (SBCs) at access and interconnect borders for IMS services.

VoIP equipment purchases are decreasing at the expense of spending on the deployment of IMS (IP multimedia subsystem) technology, according to Infonetics Research.
Worldwide sales of IMS equipment, including HSS (home subscriber servers), CSCF servers, and voice application servers, are forecast to jump 74 per cent in 2009 over 2008.

The worldwide market for carrier VoIP equipment has stalled after a pro-longed period of double-digit annual revenue growth that began in 2002.
This led to the market contracting for the first time ever in 2008, with a drop in revenue of 6 per cent, according to Infonetics Research.