China-Based Huawei Leads Worldwide VoIP Media Gateway Market

China-based Huawei is the worldwide leader in the worldwide VoIP media gateway and softswitch market, according to just-published report by Dittberner Associates. The report also found that media gateway and softswitch VoIP port shipments totaled 36.8 million units in 2004.

The report "Dittberner's Worldwide FY2004 NGN (Next Generation Network) Shipments Analysis" found that Huawei led the worldwide VoIP Media gateway and softswitch market in 2004 with 24.48% of all port shipments. Nortel Networks was second with 18.21% market share. Sonus, UTStarcom, and Siemens rounded out the top five.

The research also found that in 2004 an increasing number of network operators started the evolution of their fixed network towards the next generation network architecture at both the tandem/transit and local/class 5 levels.

"The migration of PSTN to packet telephony is inevitable" Lilian Tau, VP market research at Dittberner, said in a statement. "There is no universal NGN solution architecture and it is up to each carrier to evolve its network at different rates depending on the state of its infrastructure, on the specific market situation, and on regulatory framework conditions."