BANGALORE, INDIA: Worldwide service provider voice over IP (VoIP) equipment revenue totaled $598 million in 2Q09, up 0.8 percent sequentially and down 32 percent over 2Q08.

This is according to Infonetics Research's quarterly Service Provider VoIP Equipment and Subscribers market share and forecast report, which tracks trunk media gateways, media servers, session border controllers, softswitches, voice application servers, and VoIP subscribers.

Diane Myers, directing analyst, service provider, VoIP and IMS for Infonetics Research, said: "The product and competitive landscape of the service provider VoIP equipment market is reshaping in 2009, as stronger vendors weather the storm and, in some segments, even thrive."

"While the overall market is still down from a year ago, it stabilized in the second quarter, with flat quarter-over-quarter revenue. The healthiest segments were voice application servers, high and low density media gateways, and Class 5 softswitches. EMEA and North America had strong growth," she explains.

Services Provider VoIP Equipment Market Report Highlights

EMEA was the trunk media gateway sweet spot for the quarter, posting 41 percent sequential gains in 2Q09, with increases across all sub-categories.

North American service providers and conferencing service providers continue to drive media server growth, one of the few segments that continues to experience year-over-year revenue growth.

The voice application server segment was the real gem in 2Q09, with a 31 percent sequential increase in worldwide revenue.

The segment is driven by the move to residential VoIP by incumbent operators in NGN VoIP and IMS deployments.

Vendors that stood out with healthy revenue increases in 2Q09 include AudioCodes, Cisco, MetaSwitch, Nortel, Sonus, Alcatel-Lucent, Italtel, and BroadSoft.