September/October 2001
 

• North American Voice Services Market To Reach 128 Million Users
• Cooperative Suppliers Will Profit From Projected $29 Billion Wireless Enterprise Market
• Residential Gateway Market To Be Driven By Enhanced Services
• Enterprise ASP Spending On The Rise
• Wireless Handhelds Are Target Devices For Convergence
• Service Provider Infrastructure Spending To Rise
• Study Analyzes Wireless And Data Impact on ILECs

North American Voice Services Market To Reach 128 Million Users
The Kelsey Group has projected that the North American market for voice services will reach 128 million users by 2005, and 45 million of those will be regular users of voice portal applications. Deployment of speech recognition and a wide range of voice-enabled services will offer cost savings, leading to customer retention. Allied Business Intelligence has also projected there will be 56 million mobile voice portal users in North America by the end of 2005, who will access 250,000 voice-enabled Web sites, contributing to a $50 billion v-commerce market.

Cooperative Suppliers Will Profit From Projected $29 Billion Wireless Enterprise Market
Once suppliers put aside their varying interests and work together, they will benefit from a wireless enterprise market projected to reach $29 billion by 2006, according to Ovum. Suppliers have focused on the consumer market and "fun" hobbyist services, but should capitalize on the burgeoning corporate sector to reap the benefits of this market. Suppliers should cooperate to create a range of mobility solutions for access to various types of applications, through various access methods, according to the Ovum report.

Residential Gateway Market To Be Driven By Enhanced Services
An Allied Business Intelligence report projects the residential gateway equipment market will grow from $267 million in 2000 to $7.1 billion in annual revenue by 2006. The growth will be fueled by service providers who enable enhanced services and applications to be delivered to the home. North America will account for 74 percent of all gateway shipments initially, while Europe and the Asia-Pacific region will reduce North America's share to 44 percent by 2006. Europe will also contribute to a more than 40 percent share of utility-centric gateway shipments.

Enterprise ASP Spending On The Rise
IDC is forecasting that enterprise customers will spend more than $13 billion annually on hosted services by 2005, up from the $693.5 million they spent in 2000. The US currently represents the largest opportunity for enterprise ASP spending, although Western Europe is expected to increase its spending in this space from $74.4 million in 2000 to $5.1 billion by 2005. Shortages of skilled IT personnel as well as increased awareness of the ASP business model are expected to fuel growth, according to IDC.

Wireless Handhelds Are Target Devices For Convergence
As communication and information services converge and mobile applications become prevalent, the wireless handheld will be the target device for delivering next-generation phone features, according to Cahners In-Stat Group. "With relatively modest form factor adaptations, wireless handsets will be the standard, single-handed use, mobile personal area network (m-PAN) form factor," said Brenda Sky, industry analyst for Cahners. The study also found that PDAs, palmtops, and entertainment choices will merge functionality into better handheld units with wireless voice capability, and that the wireless mobility space is already growing out of traditional fixed line environments.

Service Provider Infrastructure Spending To Rise
The total market for infrastructure purchases by service providers will grow from $88 billion in 2000 to $212 billion by 2005, according to IDC. Network equipment, including most communications and networking hardware required for carrier-grade networks, will lead the increase in purchases. Other items will include servers, services for building, integrating, installing, and developing infrastructure, software to manage and run networks, and storage devices like storage-attached networks or network-attached storage.

Study Analyzes Wireless And Data Impact on ILECs
A report sponsored by Technology Futures, Inc. measures the impact wireless services, high-speed data access, and other competitive technologies will have on the ILEC market. The report was sponsored by the Telecommunications Technology Forecasting Group, a consortium of ILECs. Competition from wireless and other forms of access could lower the number of ILEC narrowband access lines by 25 percent by 2005, according to the report. It also finds that wireless and other communications services like IP voice could displace up to 50 percent of ILECs' revenue-generating voice usage. The report also boldly predicts that narrowband switching equipment has a remaining life of only four to five years, based on competition and technological advancements.

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