Cisco leads in shrinking enterprise telephony market

Stuart Corner
Monday, 02 March 2009 02:46

IT Industry - Strategy

Market research firm Infonetics Research says the worldwide enterprise telephony market dropped 14 percent sequentially in 4Q08 to $US2.3b with vendor revenue down for all types of equipment (pure IP PBX, hybrid PBX, and TDM PBX).

"Despite a quarterly revenue loss, Cisco maintains its lead in overall PBX/KTS revenue market share in 4Q08, and in 2008, grabbed the lead for the entire year for the first time as well," Infonetics said.

Year-over-year, the overall PBX market was up 1.1 percent with the IP PBX segments up and the TDM segment down as the market continues switching over from TDM to IP equipment and the economy tightens up. Pure IP PBX revenue grew 25 percent worldwide in 2008, sustained by new product introductions such as NEC's new line of pure IP PBXs.

"Alcatel-Lucent and ShoreTel are the only vendors posting PBX equipment revenue gains in the tough fourth quarter, with Alcatel-Lucent's revenue up 13 percent sequentially, due in part to seasonality, and ShoreTel's revenue up one percent," Infonetics said.

Infonetics is predicting even more market shrinkage in 2009. Matthias Machowinski, directing analyst, enterprise voice and data, said: "Because of the significantly deteriorating worldwide economic conditions, we expect the overall enterprise telephony market to contract fairly significantly in 2009."

He was however optimistic about 2010, on the assumption (looking increasingly unlikely of general economic turnaround. "Once the world's major economies start growing again, however, a recovery in the PBX market will follow. We expect the market to stabilise in 2010, resume growth in 2011, and hit double-digit annual growth by 2012."