Huawei is poised to take the top spot from the current bighitters in the service delivery platform (SDP) market, Oracle and Ericsson.
SDPs are experiencing significant growth among mobile operators, which see them as weapon to create carrier-driven software platforms that could limit the power of the open web players.
Ericsson still holds the top position for SDP services revenue, according to new figures from Infonetics Research, while Oracle leads in SDP software.
But Huawei now leads the overall market and could well displace the other two before the end of this year, says the report, which forecasts that the worldwide SDP sector will reach $5.2 billion in value by 2015.
“Interest in API exposure continues to fuel momentum in the SDP market, as do operators' app store strategies, although operators are increasingly regarding these initiatives as ways to differentiate their offerings in competitive markets as opposed to significant revenue opportunities,” commented directing analyst Shira Levine.
“While consumer services continue to be a primary driver behind SDP market growth, we see an emerging opportunity in the B2B space, including using SDPs to support machine-to-machine applications and cloud-based app delivery to the enterprise and SMB markets.”
The analysts also say there is interest in using an SDP to support on-demand, real time service as needed in carriers' cloud strategies.
Geographically, the fastest growing areas for SDP are the emerging economies, where operators are just starting out with deployments. In particular, growth is seen in APAC, Latin America and the Middle East.