ABI: Ericsson leads on IMS technology, deployments

Ericsson is leading the vendor pack in IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) deployments and technology development, but Alcatel-Lucent is gaining strongly, according to a vendor ranking matrix released today by ABI Research.

The research firm measured IMS vendors on implementation (based on number of deployments and availability of IMS elements) and innovation (several factors including R&D budgets, partnerships and technology innovation). Ericsson finished first on both fronts, credited by ABI with more than 50 commercial IMS products, including many tier 1 deals.

Following Ericsson, according to ABI, is Alcatel-Lucent – which gained the most ground compared with previous rankings – and Nokia Siemens. In order, rounding out the top 10: Motorola, Huawei, Cisco, Nortel, Acme Packet, Thomson and Tekelec.

IMS implementations are still lagging expectations, though U.S. tier 1s like AT&T and Verizon are moving out of the lab and into production. Still most vendors say the promise of IMS market remains unfilled, largely because opportunistic IMS apps have yet to emerge and making a network-wide move to IMS remains a multi-year – if not multi-decade – project.