Icon fonts have always been kind of a hack. SVG is the right formats for many reason - the primary reason: it's XML. We just need better browser support.
I still believe using fonts to show icons is a hack. When we have better support for SVG files in browsers I believe that will be the most popular way of displaying icons. Simply because icon fonts are harder to user and edit.
With SVG files the icons are delivered in XML format that can easily be manipulated by eg. JS. The downside is of course the many server requests it will require - one per icon.