Cloud and Virtual PBX, UC Markets to Hit $12B by 2018

A new report indicates that cloud and virtual PBX and UC solutions are going to continue to grow at a rapid rate well into 2018. This new report seems to underline that trends that have been growing over the last few years that is seeing land based phone lines being squeezed out little by little.

Another report shows that smartphones have become as popular as ever and IP phones are only gaining in popularity. Virtual PBX and UC solutions are holding up their end, with this newest report indicating those markets will surpass values of $12 billion by the end of 2018.

Industry insider Infonetics Research has released the report, showing just how healthy the cloud-based and virtual PBX and UC markets are heading into the end of this decade. These services are set to grow as much as 13 percent by the end of this year and will only continue to grow in the next five years.

“While sales of premises-based PBX systems have been stagnant to declining over the past few years, the market for cloud services continues to expand with businesses worldwide seeking out hosted alternatives,” said Diane Myers, principal analyst for VoIP, UC, and IMS at Infonetics Research, in a statement. “Hosted services seats grew more than 20 percent worldwide in 2013.”

The report seems to indicate that it doesn’t really matter which provider you are talking about when it comes to healthy revenues. AT&T, Avaya, CenturyLink are all going to be reaping the benefit of the popularity of these technologies. This appears to be the case even thought there are a growing number of vendors popping up around the globe. The larger competition won’t mean less money from the best companies, but that money will be spread around a bit more than previously thought.

The report estimates there will be as many as 62.6 million seats in service by 2018. Despite that number it seems unlikely that vendors will be able to outstrip demand.

Edited by Alisen Downey