Cisco and Avaya Tighten their Grip on the Enterprise Voice Market

New data from Synergy Research Group show that enterprise voice equipment revenues reached $2.4 billion in Q4 2011, bringing total revenues to $9.6 billion for the year. The market has plateaued over the last three years, with quarterly revenues staying within a fairly narrow range of $2.3 billion to $2.5 billion. While total market size has remained stable, the market segmentation is shifting. From 2009 to 2011, the IP telephony segment of the market grew from 61 percent to 66 percent, leaving traditional PBX/KTS/hybrid systems to account for an ever smaller share equipment revenues.The shift from traditional phone systems to IP technology has resulted in significant changes in vendor market shares. Cisco and Avaya have increased revenue markedly since 2009, primarily at the expense of their European and Asian competitors. Cisco’s market share increased from 26 percent in 2009 to 32 percent in 2011, while Avaya made even greater gains, growing from 12 percent to 22 percent of global enterprise voice equipment revenues.

Source: Synergy Research Group/TeleGeography

Changes in enterprise voice equipment market shares have been particularly stark in the Asia-Pacific region, which accounted for 22 percent of worldwide equipment revenues in 2011. Enterprises in the region were relatively slow to adopt IP technology into their voice networks, and consequently local vendors have been late to jump on the IP bandwagon. All leading Japanese vendors have lost market share, chiefly to Cisco and Avaya. “Cisco and Avaya have increased their combined market share in the Asia-Pacific from 21 percent to 37 percent since 2009,” said Synergy Research Group’s Jeremy Duke. “As the enterprise voice equipment market in the region is expected to grow only modestly in the coming years, local vendors will be left struggling to regain their lost market share.”

Synergy Research Group’s Enterprise Voice Research Service provides data, analysis, and forecasts of the enterprise voice equipment market.Synergy Research Group is a strategic partner of TeleGeography, providing market intelligence, analytics and strategic consulting services to the networking and telecom industries.