Global unified communication market totaled $523.4 million in 2008

[Marketwire] Communications market research firm Infonetics Research released the first edition of its biannual report, Unified Communication and IP Contact Center Market Share and Forecasts. Report highlights follow.

ANALYST NOTE

"The unified communication market (unified messaging and communicator software) did well in 2008, growing 16% sequentially, a respectable performance given the deterioration in the economy worldwide and its effect on enterprise spending. While reduced enterprise spending will be a drag on the market, revenue in the communicator segment, the most important measure of the overall unified communication market, is expected to nearly double in 2009. Unified communication enables workers to communicate more effectively with mobile and geographically dispersed colleagues, and to integrate multi-modal communication services to help increase productivity. These drivers, combined with aggressive bundling by PBX vendors to increase the competitiveness of their offerings (and to fend off the threat to the PBX business from Microsoft) will push the UC market to relatively good growth in 2009," said Matthias Machowinski, Infonetics Research's directing analyst for enterprise voice and data.

MARKET HIGHLIGHTS

-- The worldwide unified communication market (unified messaging platforms and communicator software clients) totaled $523.4 million in 2008
-- Shipments of communicator clients grew 47% in 2008, to 1.4 million worldwide, after nearly tripling in 2007, when the then newly formed Nortel-Microsoft alliance drove significant growth
-- In the fast-growing communicator market, Cisco rose from the no. 5 spot on the revenue market share leaderboard to no. 1 in 2008, followed by Siemens and Avaya, who are neck and neck in second and third, respectively
-- The worldwide IP contact center market is growing at a healthy clip, up 54% in 2008 to $956 million, driven by the transition from TDM to IP and demand from Asia Pacific
-- Avaya continues to lead in IP contact center revenue market share, followed by Alcatel-Lucent, then Cisco

Infonetics Research: Cisco leads fastest growing segment of UC market