Worldwide telecom equipment markets will post a 4.8% CAGR over the 2005-2010 period.

Service providers' capital expenditures momentum remains robust in 2006 (+7%) driven by emerging regions but carrier consolidation in mature markets affects long term outlook.

The industry landscape is profoundly changing under consolidation, reorganisation and increasing competition from emerging region vendors.

Cisco remains the largest network infrastructure vendor worldwide ahead of Alcatel/Lucent, Ericsson/Marconi and Nokia/Siemens.

Mobile handsets and network infrastructure (radio access and core), optical transmission and next gen voice switching hold the strongest growth potential over the next 5 years.

China is now the second largest telecom infrastructure market worldwide behind the US but ahead of Japan.