IP Telephony continues to be the fastest-growing segment of the Enterprise Voice market, according to market research firm Synergy Research Group, which recently published data on Q4 2009 and YE 2009 market shares.

 

Even though the global market for enterprise voice totaled under USD 10 billion for complete year of 2009, the second half of the period showed solid growth across all voice segments with network upgrades, despite economic downturn. This showed positive momentum after the market fell over 25 percent, year over year.

 

In 2009, IP Telephony flourished by representing nearly 70 percent of the total Telephony market, with the remainder comprised of the legacy markets of PBXs and KTS. Along with IPT even market of IP Phones also grew. The total PBX market is also anticipated to exceed $6 billion in 2014.

 

According to Synergy (News - Alert) Research Group’ Q4 2009 and YE 2009 market shares publications, few vendors fared better than others. Some of the companies that reported strong gains include Avaya, ALU, Cisco, Aastra, ShoreTel (News - Alert), and Mitel.

 

Synergy’s one of the publications on IP telephony line shipments YE2009 indicates that Avaya topped with 2.15 points Y-Y, Alcatel-Lucent was in second position with 1.37 points, followed by Cisco, Aastra, ShorTel, and Mitel (News - Alert) with 1.23, 0.32, 0.29, 0.15 points respectively.

 

In 2008, Cisco topped enterprise telephony chart. Even though Cisco has bagged the major share of the market, it lost nearly 2 market share points to the competition in 2009. Some of the biggest market share gainers for IP phones in 2009 included Polycom (News - Alert), Alcatel-Lucent and Avaya.

 

“In looking at different regions, we see the advantages of regional strength come in to play. For example, in the U.S. the top gainers were Cisco, Avaya, Siemens, and ShoreTel,” said Jeremy Duke, principal analyst and founder, Synergy Research Group. “In comparison, the top market share gainers in EMEA were Alcatel-Lucent, Avaya, Siemens, Aastra and Mitel.”

 

However, the unified communications market annual revenues are forecasted to expand faster than the overall enterprise voice market through 2014, according to one of the reports from Dell’ (News - Alert) Oro Group.

 

The Enterprise Voice market covered by Synergy Research Group encompasses IP-only and converged IP/TDM PBX phone systems and IP Phones.