Carrier VoIP equipment market shrinks during 1Q09

According to the shipment numbers we have from vendors, there was an appreciable sequential decline from 4Q08 to 1Q09 in the volume of carrier VoIP equipment sales. Softswitch components, which comprise the bulk of carrier VoIP equipment, saw sales decline from $897 million in 4Q08 to $708 million in 1Q09. That represents a Q-o-Q decline of over 21 percent.

The worst hit among the softswitch components was the Class 4 softswitch which saw sales declining by over 40 percent.

6.3 million VoIP subscriber lines were sold in 1Q09, out of which an estimated one million lines were hosted IP Centrex while the remaining 5.3 million lines went towards residential VoIP deployments.

There was however growth in SBC and IP Media Server segments owing to a strong performance by Huawei in SBC and Radisys in the media server segments. While Radisys held over 80% market share in independent IP media server category, Huawei inched frighteningly close to Acme Packet during the quarter!!! Huawei had strong SBC traction in APAC and CALA.