The main reason for icon-fonts is that they are much easier to use than svg. On the other hand, the moment one understands the flexibility and power of svg, svg becomes the primary choice.
In most projects I use a combination of both. If the customer is happy with the default style that fontawesome or icomoon provides (and most customers are), I use fonts, because I'm lazy. If the customer wants something more unique, I rely on svg.
I don't know if it's a german phenomenon but many customers also demand that the site is working with IE8 and then icon fonts become an alternative.
In most cases icon-fonts are much bigger, you have to provide four (or five) different font-types, which is grotesque when you compare it to a set of svg icons.