During 1Q18, the total PCRF market grew 19% versus 4Q17 but was flat compared to 1Q17. The sequential growth was driven by shipments to Asia Pacific, which grew 36% compared to 1Q17. Typically, the first calendar quarter tends to be strong in Asia Pacific, particularly in China, because it represents the last quarter companies’ fiscal year, and operators push to spend their capital budgets for the year, resulting in a significant increase in shipments and revenue to vendors. In 1Q18, shipments to North America were up 8% compared to 1Q17 while shipments to EMEA and Latin America contracted over the same timeframe.

During the quarter, Huawei’s PCRF revenues more than doubled sequentially as shipments to China boosted the ales. Due to seasonal factors and cyclical weakness amongst its policy customers, Ericsson’s PCRF revenues contracted on a sequential. We expect that Ericsson’s PCRF business will rebound through 2018 as their customers add capacity and continue to migrate existing capacity to virtual and cloud-based systems. Despite a large sequential contraction in revenues, Cisco was the third largest vendor during the quarter.

Other significant vendors for the quarter include: Openet, Nokia, Oracle, and Amdocs.