Strong Global Growth to Occur in Business VoIP Market within the Next Five Years

Infonetics Research, an international market research and consulting firm, has recently released  two voice over IP reports: its new SIP Trunking and Enterprise SBC Strategies: North American Enterprise Survey and its latest VoIP and UC Services and Subscribers Market Share and Forecast.

The VoIP and UC Services and Subscribers Market Share and Forecast tracks residential/SOHO and business VoIP and unified communications services and ranks service providers by VoIP subscriber market share.

As per the findings of the report, global service provider revenue from business and residential/SOHO VoIP services totaled nearly $58 billion in 2011, up 16 percent from the previous year. And the number of seats for hosted business VoIP and unified communications services is on track to more than double between 2012 and 2016.

SIP trunking service revenue jumped 128 percent in 2011 from the previous year, as businesses around the world continue to adopt SIP trunking for its flexibility, centralization of resources and cost-effective voice connectivity. Also, the demand for cloud-based services helped push hosted PBX and UC service revenue up 33 percent and seats up 44 percent in 2011.

The number of residential and SOHO VoIP subscribers also grew by 14 percent in 2011, to over 178 million worldwide.

In a press release, Diane Myers, directing analyst for VoIP and IMS at Infonetics Research, said,“The revenue that service providers derive from their residential and SOHO VoIP subscribers still eclipses what they get from businesses, but the business segment is growing about twice as fast, due in large part to the surging popularity of SIP trunking and hosted VoIP and UC services.”

According to the SIP Trunking and Enterprise SBC survey, businesses continue to migrate to VoIP on their premises, but when it comes to calling outside their business, legacy technologies are not disappearing any time soon.

Infonetics’ survey also found that the use of SIP trunking is growing, as a third of the North American enterprises participating in Infonetics’ survey currently leverage SIP trunks. Also, a total of 42 percent plan to use it by 2014.