Trends in UC and PBX

Unified communications market up 27% from a year ago; PBX market continues to take hits

—Market research firm Infonetics Research released its 1st quarter 2014 (1Q14) Enterprise Unified Communications and Voice Equipment report, which tracks PBX phone systems, voice over IP gateways, unified communications (UC) applications, and IP phones.

ENTERPRISE TELEPHONY AND UC MARKET HIGHLIGHTS

• Worldwide PBX revenue (TDM, hybrid, and pure IP) is down 8% in 1Q14 from 1Q13, and down 8% from 4Q13
• The unified communications (UC) segment is the lone bright spot, racking up a 27% worldwide revenue increase in 1Q14 from the same period a year ago
• Although there are pockets of growth in parts of Europe and South America, along with strength down market, none of it is large enough to lift the overall PBX market
• CALA (the Caribbean and Latin America) is the only region to notch positive year-over-year PBX revenue growth in 1Q14, as economic activity picked up in anticipation of the World Cup
• Cisco, Avaya, and NEC are the PBX market share leaders; Mitel cracked the top 4 as a result of its merger with Aastra Microsoft, who leads the UC market, is the only vendor in the enterprise telephony segment to post year-over-year revenue growth in 1Q14

ANALYST NOTE
“The enterprise telephony market continues to struggle as businesses hold off new PBX purchases and invest instead in unified communications (UC) applications. Purchase cycles are getting longer, and competitive activity is putting pressure on the market with pricing all over the map,” notes Diane Myers, principal analyst for VoIP, UC, and IMS at Infonetics Research.