IP-based telephony showed strong growth in both the service provider and enterprise markets in the second quarter, according to new data from Infonetics Research.

Infonetics’ "Service Provider Next Gen Voice and IMS Equipment" report indicated that worldwide revenue for service provider next-generation voice and IMS equipment will more than double by 2009, from $2.5 billion in 2005 to $5.8 billion. In the second quarter of this year, the market grew by 6% to $772.3 million. That’s a 12-point turnaround from the first quarter when the market dropped 6%.

Stéphane Téral, principal analyst for service provider VoIP at Infonetics Research, said all equipment segments showed gains except session border controllers, which were down slightly for the quarter, but up significantly year-over-year.

Téral also said that SBCs have become a strategic component in next-generation networks and that many vendors will likely shift from a standalone to an integrated SBC architecture, including Cisco, Juniper, and AudioCodes, which recently acquired Nuera Communications and Netrake. The SBC market is still destined to grow by 84% between this year and last.

Trunk media gateways and softswitches accounted for much of the growth in the carrier VoIP/IMS market. Téral said both segments would grow to more than $1.3 billion this year.

Infonetcis showed Cisco Systems taking the lead in the quarter from Sonus Networks thanks to its 84% growth spurt. Nortel still holds the lead in softswitching, while Acme Packet continues to lead the SBC market and BroadSoft in application servers.

Cisco also had a strong quarter in the enterprise space. It had a record quarter in the worldwide PBX/KTS market at 3% growth from last quarter, but 10% year-over-year, putting revenue at $2.2 billion.

Matthias Machowinski, directing analyst for enterprise telephony at Infonetics Research, said not everyone did well in this space and that results were mixed. He said Cisco beat already high expectations and that Nortel also had a good quarter and claimed the lead for IP PBX lines. In this area, Cisco moved from fifth to second place.

Cisco helped drive the pure IP PBX market system revenue up 36% in the quarter, while the hybrid IP PBX segment dropped by a percentage point. IP phone shipments also grew. They increased 17% to 2.1 million.

The geographic breakdown for the second quarter showed this: 44% of worldwide PBX revenue came from the EMEA market, 33% from North America, 17% from Asia Pacific and 6% from CALA.

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