Researchers have published sales figures for voice over internet protocol (VoIP) hardware, which has shown a jump of almost 15 per cent.
Statisticians Infonetics Research revealed that the total value of all sales of VoIP equipment leapt by 14.5 per cent in the last three months of 2010 when compared to the previous three quarters. The value of the market, which includes voice application servers, session border controllers and trunk media gateways, now stands at £365 million ($592 million).
These new figures support other recent statistics that show many small to medium businesses are beginning to abandon traditional land line business phone systems for IP telephony. Surveys indicate that this trend will continue to gather pace, with many firms citing monetary savings on telephone calls and the flexibility offered by business VoIP as the main reasons for making the switch. Advances in the technology incorporated into business phone systems and the proliferation of super-fast broadband connections have enabled IP telephony to become a viable proposition to the domestic market as well as the business sector.
Chief analyst for IMS and VoIP at Infonetics, Diane Myers, commented on the latest figures. She said:
“SBCs ended 2010 with a phenomenal revenue increase of 42 per cent over 2009 due to increases in IP interconnectivity in fixed and mobile networks, growth in the number of VoIP subscribers, and SIP trunking.”
The news will be welcomed by every VoIP reseller; in spite of the strong recovery in the final quarter, the Asia Pacific region is the sole region to show revenue growth year-on-year, with a 24 per cent increase in total sales when compared to 2009. However, as global economic conditions improve, the tide is expected to turn, with more than 40 million units of IP telephony hardware forecasted to be sold in 2015 alone.
