Communications and Technology Industry Research

The worldwide enterprise telephony market inched up 2 percent between the fourth quarter of 2007 and the first quarter of 2008 to $2.5 billion, with TDM, pure IP and hybrid equipment sales all posting low single-digit sequential growth, according to a report by Infonetics Research (News - Alert).

 

The report, “Enterprise Telephony Worldwide Market Share and Forecasts,” says the overall market is up 6 percent from a year ago, buoyed by strong IP PBX (News - Alert) systems equipment sales, despite falling TDM PBX/KTS equipment sales.

 

“In the first quarter of 2008, we saw some weakness in the North American and EMEA enterprise telephony markets, but it was offset by strong results in Asia Pacific,” said Matthias Machowinski, directing analyst for enterprise voice and data at Infonetics Research. “Worldwide economic uncertainty could have a larger impact on this market than on others, since one of the prime drivers of PBX sales is the creation of new, and expansion of existing, businesses. “While we’ve factored in a weak year for North America, we expect the overall worldwide PBX/KTS market to continue growing in 2008, at the end of which it will pass the $10 billion mark in annual revenue.”

 

According to the report, in Asia Pacific, TDM and IP PBX manufacturer revenue was up 26 percent sequentially from fourth quarter 2007 to first quarter 2008. Also, the top six PBX.KTS system vendors in the first quarter of this year, in terms of lines shipped, are Nortel, Cisco, Avaya (News - Alert), NEC, Alcatel-Lucent, and Siemens. These vendors account for three quarters of the market.

 

The report says Cisco is the only vendor whose overall PBX market share is increasing, and in CY07, Cisco (News - Alert) added three points to their revenue market share, while Avaya, Nortel, and Siemens were all down slightly.

 

Other highlights of the report are that the TDM segment of the enterprise telephony market is forecast to drop below the $1 billion mark for the first time in 2008 and that worldwide IP softphone shipments are up 76 percent sequentially from fourth quarter 2007 to first quarter 2008.

 

Infonetics’ report provides worldwide and regional forecasts and market size for TDM PBX/KTS systems, IP PBX systems with hybrid and pure IP splits, IP PBX by system size, VoIP gateways, and IP deskphones and softphones. Companies tracked include 3Com, Aastra, AudioCodes, Alcatel-Lucent, Avaya, Cisco, Dialogic, Mitel, NEC, Nortel, Quintum (News - Alert), Samsung, ShoreTel, Siemens, Tadiran, Toshiba, Vertical, and others. Market share pivot tables are included.

 

For report highlights, log in to Infonetics’ online portal from www.infonetics.com (see Enterprise Voice area).

 

Infonetics Research is an international communications market research firm, which has been tracking emerging markets since 1990. Infonetics covers a broad range of service provider, product manufacturer and enterprise and SMB markets, including network security, enterprise voice, unified communications, broadband networks, IPTV, IP video, mobile TV, optical networks, metro Ethernet, carrier routing and switching, wireless, FMC, VoIP, IMS, policy management, subscriber management and service management.