The worldwide IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) equipment market, including IMS core equipment and IMS application servers, continues its pattern of extreme fluctuations quarter to quarter, reports Infonetics Research. In addition, from 2010 to 2014, Infonetics Research forecasts service providers will spend a cumulative $4.4 billion on IMS equipment over the 5 year period.

"China stole the show in the carrier VoIP and IMS markets in the first quarter of 2010. In a typically down quarter globally, Chinese service provider activity was strong enough in 1Q10 to drive carrier VoIP manufacturer revenue in Asia Pacific up 16% from the previous quarter, and Asia Pacific's share of worldwide IMS equipment revenue up 20 percentage points," notes Diane Myers, directing analyst for service provider VoIP and IMS at Infonetics Research.

Overall, the IMS equipment market is experiencing strong and healthy growth, driven by continued adoption of VoIP services worldwide and the migration of VoIP services to IMS networks by service providers.

While Ericsson continues to have the most commercial deployments of IMS networks, they remain under serious competition from Alcatel-Lucent, Huawei, and Nokia Siemens Networks.