Cisco retakes lead from Microsoft in collaboration market

Overall market shows two per cent growth in revenues, according to market watcher

Cisco has regained the leading spot in the enterprise collaboration infrastructure market from Microsoft, according to the latest second-quarter data from Synergy Research Group.

The news comes just one quarter after Microsoft overtook Cisco in revenue from enterprise collaboration.

The latest data show the market generated $7.7bn (£4.77bn) of revenue in Q2, with Cisco holding a 16 per cent share, and Microsoft behind it with 15.8 per cent of the market.

Jeremy Duke, Synergy Research Group founder and chief analyst, said: "In Q2 Cisco bounced back from a poor start to the year in the enterprise voice segment and also saw strong growth in WebEx, though telepresence revenues remained soft."

"One issue that Cisco faces is that a substantial amount of its collaboration revenue comes from mature markets which are flat or declining. In contrast, Microsoft achieved sequential growth in all 10 of the segments in which it is active, and grew year on year in nine of them," he added.

Total revenues for the quarter were up two per cent year on year, but there were declines in the enterprise voice and telepresence markets.

On a rolling annual basis revenues reached $30.5bn, up three per cent from the preceding four quarters.