IBISWorld released its list of industries with strong growth forecasts expected for 2008. VoIP is first of the top 10 industries which IBISWorld predicts to do well in 2008 and is forecasted to grow by 24.3 percent this year. Those in corn farming, foam product manufacturing, web search portal, and biotechnology fields, won’t be far behind.

VoIP Leads The Way

Subscriber growth will drive revenue in the VoIP sector, with numbers expected to rise by 21.2 percent this year to 16.6 million, while the number of establishments will jump by a significant 44.5 percent to 2,190 nationwide.

Senior analyst at IBISWorld, George Van Horn explained: “The VoIP providers industry will easily outperform the wider telecommunications sector this year, given that it is an emerging service which continues to gain greater consumer and business acceptance. As household broadband penetration increases, it will facilitate greater use of digital services, helping to improve the call quality of industry services. In fact, by 2012, we expect revenue growth of 90.2 percent, bringing total revenue to $4.88 billion. By the same time, we predict that the U.S. will have approximately 25.4 million paying VoIP subscribers.”

And this year alone, revenue is set to grow an impressive 24.3 percent to $3.19 billion. As services improve and gain greater consumer acceptance, IBISWorld forecasts that many more providers will begin to turn a profit – with Vonage leading the way. The U.S.’s largest VoIP provider is expected to become profitable for the first time this quarter.