The telecom service provider voice over IP (VoIP) and IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) equipment market rose 29 percent to $1.3 billion in the first quarter of 2015, said IHS.
Activities in the U.S. telecom market were one of the growth drivers, while all regions contributed to growth in Q1 2015.
“VoIP and IMS equipment sales bucked the typically slow first quarter, with year-over-year growth in the first quarter being driven by core IMS solutions and voice application servers,” said Diane Myers, research director for VoIP, UC and IMS for IHS.
In 2014, VoIP and IMS equipment sales grew 64 percent to $4.24 billion, powered by the network transformation projects of mobile and fixed operators.
Telecom network vendor Alcatel-Lucent, which will be acquired by Nokia, posted its best quarter ever for IMS sales due in large part to North America.
All major geographical regions enjoyed growth in Q1 2015, but Latin America increased 88 percent, said IHS.
The telecom analysis report suggests that voice over WiFi (VoWiFi) will be big news this year as telecom operators expand or launch IMS networks for VoWiFi.
22 telecom operators have already launched commercial voice over LTE (VoLTE) services, and additional operators in Asia Pacific, Europe and Canada will take VoLTE online in 2015.
