Despite the recent rebound in PC sales, figures from MZA reveal the embattled telephony market continued to shrink in the final quarter of 2009.

The market watcher says more than 13 million corded PBX extensions were shipped globally in the three months to 31 December, 10 per cent down on 2008.

With year-on-year drops of more than 20 per cent registered in each of the three previous quarters – including a 30 per cent plunge in Q1 – MZA stressed that Q4 was an improvement on the rest of the year.

Total 2009 shipments fell 22 per cent.

Globally, networking daddy Cisco held onto the gold-medal position with a 12 per cent share, followed by Panasonic and NEC on 11 per cent. Alcatel-Lucent ruled the roost in EMEA.

IP desktop deployments continued to gain momentum accounting for 30 per cent of total extensions in Q4 and 29 per cent for the whole year.

Regionally, western Europe was roughly on a par with the global figure as full-year shipments in the region fell 18 per cent. Eastern Europe declined by more than 50 per cent.