Lack of new firms hits telephony market

Enterprise telephony sales fall 14 per cent sequentially in Q4

The lack of new business creation and business expansion has taken its toll on the telephony market, Infonetics Research has claimed.

According to the research house, worldwide enterprise telephony equipment sales fell 14 per cent sequentially in the fourth quarter, with even the IP PBX segment failing to register growth.

Infonetics blamed the figures on the lack of new firms being created, as well as the lack of expansion among existing firms – a key driver of telephony sales. Matthias Machowinski, directing analyst, enterprise voice and data at Infonetics, predicted the market would not resume growth until 2011.

“Because of the significantly deteriorating worldwide economic conditions, we expect the overall enterprise telephony market to contract fairly significantly in 2009,” he said.

“Once the world's major economies start growing again, however, a recovery in the PBX market will follow.”

Cisco topped the market in revenue share terms for the first time ever in 2008, despite losing ground in the fourth quarter. Alcatel-Lucent and Shortel were the only top vendors to post PBX equipment revenue gains in the fourth quarter.