Nortel spearheads UK telephony market
Sales of pure IP and hybrid systems keep market steady
Nortel is holding its lead in the UK telephony market, according to figures released by Canalys last week.
The Canadian vendor shipped more equipment lines in the UK in the second quarter of 2004 than Avaya or Siemens, in second and third place respectively.
In addition, the share of business going through the channel in the UK has continued to rise.
The UK is shipping proportionately more IP and hybrid IP lines than the rest of the EMEA region. Almost 46,000, or eight per cent of the 558,000 lines, shipped in the UK during the period were pure IP, compared with four per cent, or 212,000 out of 4.9 million lines, in EMEA.
Hybrid IP systems were also proportionately more popular in the UK, representing 12 per cent (68,000) of shipments in the UK, compared with six per cent (293,000) in EMEA.
"The market is judged on growth, and it's still tough for vendors in the Netherlands and Germany," said Matthew Ball, an analyst at Canalys.
"The UK has not been affected as much by the economic downturn."
Ball added that Canalys prefers to take annual rather than quarterly numbers into account because figures for the second and third quarters tend to be lower than for the first and last.
He noted that Mitel has suffered a slight fall in sales in EMEA, although it is still developing channels in the region. Avaya's shipments in the UK also declined during Q2, he said.
Paul Templeton, vice-president of enterprise solutions in EMEA at Nortel, said: "The UK strikes me as relatively stable in terms of market share.
"France and Germany are the two biggest markets [in the region], and they are influenced by dominant market players. You could argue that Alcatel and Siemens were depressing the IP market in those regions."
Resellers also noted progress in the UK. Richard Colebrook, business development director at reseller IP Infrastructures, said: "There's nothing exponential, but there is steady growth.
"Our business is focused on moving people from traditional networks to IP. That's where we're seeing our growth."