As businesses continue to hold off new phone system purchases, global enterprise PBX revenue fell 6% in the first quarter of 2015 (1Q15) from a year ago, according to the IHS Infonetics Enterprise Unified Communications and Voice Equipment report.
“The enterprise PBX market remains challenging, with revenue down yet again in the first quarter of 2015. Pure IP PBX was the one segment to post year-over-year growth due to strength in Asia Pacific,” says Diane Myers, research director for VoIP, UC and IMS at IHS.
“Things have started to slow on the unified communications (UC) front as well, which we attribute to movement to the cloud as businesses look for ease of management and flexibility,” Myers says.
Highlights from the report include:
* Worldwide PBX revenue (TDM, hybrid and pure IP) totalled $1,6-billion in 1Q15;
* PBX line shipments were up 3% in 1Q15 from 1Q14. Sales of unified communications (UC) applications dropped 5% in 1Q15 from the year-ago first quarter as enterprise spending remained conservative;
* Pure IP PBX line shipments were a strong driver, up 17% year-over-year following a solid 4Q14;
* Hybrid IP PBXs accounted for around 60% of all lines shipped in 1Q15;
* Sales of unified communications (UC) applications dropped 5% in 1Q15 from the year-ago first quarter as enterprise spending remained conservative; and
* In 1Q15, the top enterprise telephony vendors are Cisco and Avaya, while Microsoft continues to dominate the UC platform market.