Synergy Research Group released their newest report „Carrier VoIP Q4 2009 and YE 2009 market shares” that shows that the worldwide market for Carrier VoIP totaled just over $10 billion for the full year 2009.

Year over year, the market fell 18 percent; significantly less than drops measured in other Telecom and IT equipment markets.

The biggest drivers for Carrier VoIP traditionally have been migrating aging TDM PSTN switches to VoIP platforms. In the last 24 months further growth has been added with Mobile Operators pursuing the Capex and OpEx advantages of IP as did the Wireline networks before it.

According to Synergy, mobile deployments for Carrier VoIP have made a serious impact on market sizes and market players for the VoIP Media

“Gateway market. Over the last 2 years the changes have been dramatic and change continues with GENBAND’s impending acquisition of Nortel’s CVAS group. The move by GENBAND will garner a market share position twice that of their nearest competitor,” say analysts.

Synergy believes that IMS will have a strong impact on the Carrier VoIP market over the coming years. In 2009, it was clear that IMS made its mark as a highly viable and transformational service delivery platform for both fixed line and mobile carriers. One such marquee IMS example is AT&T’s U-Verse network where they have added over 1 Million IMS VoIP subscribers in the last 12 months.

"Although IMS has been around for a number of years, it clearly showed its potential in 2009," said Jeremy Duke, Principal Analyst and Founder, Synergy Research Group.

"Synergy believes 2010 will show more IMS market development with increased deployments and continued industry cooperation such as that seen with the One Voice Initiative."

Another growing area being tracked by Synergy includes the GGSN/SGSN and PDN equipment markets. Synergy says that with Smart Phone usage increasing, a tidal wave of data and video traffic is building that will force mobile operators to make large investments to contend with the change in traffic.

“We anticipate seeing more vendor activity here as vendors jockey to position themselves to take advantage of this network investment — as seen with Cisco acquiring Starent in late 2009,” says Synergy.