Carrier VoIP kit sales soar by 70 per cent

As providers begin to offer VoIP services, worldwide sales of next-generation voice products rose to $452m in the third quarter, up 13 per cent on the second quarter and 69 per cent year over year.

According to Infonetics Research's quarterly market share and forecast service, annual revenue is projected to grow from $1.3bn in 2003 to $4.8bn in 2007, representing a five-year compound annual growth rate of 39 per cent.

"Most equipment categories saw sequential growth this quarter," said Kevin Mitchell, directing analyst at Infonetics and co-author of the report.

"Voice application servers, session border controllers, and soft switches, especially Class 5 licences and revenue, grew the most.

"This indicates that service providers are really beginning to change gear, from investing in infrastructure to investing in equipment that will allow them to offer new services."

The study found that Nortel is the revenue share leader in the class 5 soft switch space with almost half the worldwide revenue, while Siemens came in second.

The worldwide media gateway market grew five per cent from the second to the third quarter, with most growth coming from the ATM switch-based voice gateway.

Cisco leads in worldwide media gateway revenue market share, but most sales are due to its universal port RAS and are not solely used for VoIP.