According to the International Data Corporation (IDC), the overall Unified Communications market in India has seen a marginal decline of 2.3% in 1H13 as compared to 1H12. 10% decline in Enterprise Telephony market has pulled down the overall UC revenues in 1H13, whereas other markets like Enterprise Collaborations and Contact Centre have seen a decent growth of 4-6% as compared to 1H12.
Enterprise Telephony market is suffering due to a combination of market factors: Firstly, IP-PBX solutions are eating into the TDM-PBX solutions revenues as the former gives better RoI for end-customers. Secondly, all the major vendors have started offering Software-based IP-PBX solutions, which is cutting their hardware revenues.
Dileep Nadimpalli, Senior Market Analyst, Unified Communications, IDC India, says, “IDC expects a recovery for India’s Unified Communications market in 2H13 and it will close 2013 with a marginal growth. Growth will be majorly driven by Enterprise Collaboration applications like Team Collaboration, Social Networking, Unified Messaging, Video Conferencing, and Web & Voice Conferencing solutions. However, we expect Enterprise Telephony market to continue to go through a declining journey.”
IDC has seen a huge traction in Video Conferencing market as this generates a clear RoI by reducing the travel cost for organizations. However, economic downturn is limiting this market to grow further as organizations are taking a cautious approach towards overall IT spending. But IDC believes this impact is just cyclical and desktop-based VC solutions will witness a growing demand in the future. Web & Voice Conferencing, Team Collaboration and Enterprise Social Networking are the next high growth areas, as these solutions will help reduce the number of emails and lower the bandwidth requirement which, in turn, will reduce the cost and improve productivity.
