Avaya heads PBX market but EMEA sales remain sluggish

New Jersey-based vendor consolidates top spot but second quarter is a mixed bag for comms market

Avaya came out on top in the global PBX market in 2011's second quarter – but sales in EMEA are struggling to gather pace as businesses hold off on upgrade projects.

According to figures from Infonetics Research, worldwide PBX revenue in Q2 grew 3.9 per cent year on year to $2.02bn (£1.22bn). Avaya led the way, accounting for about a quarter of global sales. Cisco cemented its second-place position and was the market leader in line shipments. But Aastra, Mitel and ShoreTel were the only manufacturers to see their revenue increase on the preceding quarter.

Dian Myers, directing analyst for VoIP and IMS at Infonetics, claimed Avaya's success was fuelled by "steady shipments and healthy average selling prices".

The worldwide market for unified communications (UC) technologies grew 2.3 per cent sequentially to $112.4m in Q2, with Infonetics singling out sales of Microsoft platforms as a market hotspot.

Asia-Pacific was the PBX arena's top-performing region during 2011's second quarter, with revenue up 29 per cent annually. Meanwhile, North America and EMEA continue to experience softness, particularly at the market's lower end. Infonetics indicated end users in these mature markets are not increasing their headcount as much and are putting off PBX refreshes.

Myers said: "The top enterprise telephony vendors remain in a tight battle to gain new customers and hold onto existing ones as enterprises migrate to IP and UC solutions."