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The enterprise telephony sector is undergoing major transformation. Traditional PBXs and landlines are being replaced by IP PBXs and hosted telephony services. Technologies like unified communications support the converged communications infrastructure requirements to enable multichannel communications in enterprises.

Growing trends like bring your own device (BYOD) further spur the adoption of unified communications among enterprises.

Unified communications is the integration of real-time communication services combining instant messaging, IP telephony, video conferencing, presence, data sharing, call control and speech recognition with non-real-time communication services such as unified messaging that integrates voicemail, e-mail, SMS and fax.

Recent research from Infonetics Research (News - Alert) reveals that demand for unified communications is increasing in all regions as businesses seek tools to help them boost employee productivity and flexibility.

Surprisingly, the research found that enterprise PBX (News - Alert) spending dropped to its lowest point since mid-2009. This is mainly due to the hyper competitive price pressure all over with average revenue per line down across the board, according to Diane Myers, principal analyst for VoIP, UC and IMS at Infonetics Research.

“But conservative spending by businesses is exacerbating the problem in some regions, while demand is actually flat-to-up in North America and Asia, reflecting uneven economic recoveries,” Myers said.

Asia Pacific was the lone bright spot, with PBX revenue up 7 percent in Q1 2013, according to Infonetics Research.

Global enterprise PBX market comprising TDM, hybrid and pure PBXs totaled $1.8 billion in Q1 2013, down 9 percent from the previous quarter, and down 10 percent from the year-ago first quarter, according to the research.

While the PBX market across the world faces challenges, the unified communications market remained robust. Licenses for unified communications are up both quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year, and revenue is up 21 percent from the year-ago first quarter.