The expansion of VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) services here in the states is not news, but a new report showing growth in other areas contains some interesting nuggets of note for those in the industry, and those who watch it.
The report by Persistence Market Research (PMR) titled “VoIP Services Market: Global Industry Analysis and Forecast 2015 – 2021”, shows that the market is currently dominated by users in Europe. But significantly, with the rising number of emerging economies in the Asia-Pacific region, it is expected that over the coming years the market will be dominated by Asia-Pacific countries such as India, China, Indonesia and South Korea, among others.
“The market is highly competitive and companies have to suffer high price wars to sustain into the market,” PMR noted. “The companies offer several bundled services such as free text messages, photo messages and others to attract the customers to their services.” The ‘companies’ PMR mentions refers to the current leaders in the industry including 8x8, Viber Media, Nextiva, Vonage (News - Alert) Holdings, Microsoft (for Skype), iNet Telecoms Ltd., RingCentral, and InPhonex, among others.
“The network advancement in emerging economies such as India, Brazil, Indonesia, China, and Philippines among others offers tremendous opportunities for the VoIP service provider to widen their subscriber base,” PMR says. “However the lack of awareness among the residential consumer segment and lack of promotional activities by VoIP service providers is posing challenge for the growth of the market.”
The major advantage of VoIP service is its price performance, as well as providing rich media services and phone number portability. Additionally, VoIP is capable of offering features such as service mobility, integrated applications, user control interface and other features. VoIP services are easy to install, use and troubleshoot. The VoIP services finds its application across end-use segments such as residential (consumer market), mobile network providers and corporate.