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June 05, 2015

The Cloud Slows PBX Sales for Second Consecutive Year


By Laura Stotler
TMCnet Contributing Editor

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The cloud has officially had a disruptive impact on enterprise PBX and unified communications (UC) sales, according to new research from IHS (News - Alert) Infonetics. The company found that global enterprise PBX revenues were down six percent in the first quarter of the year from the previous year, and that’s just the beginning of the news.


The IHS Enterprise Unified Communications (News - Alert) and Voice Equipment report shows the shift to the cloud is starting to have a measurable impact on the sales of traditional telephony equipment. In addition to the drop in PBX (News - Alert) revenues, sales of UC applications were down five percent from the previous year. IHS chalks up the shift to conservative enterprise spending habits as well as the slow and steady enterprise migration to the cloud.

"The enterprise PBX market remains challenging, with revenue down yet again in the first quarter of 2015,” said Diane Myers, research director for VoIP, UC and IMS at IHS. "Things have started to slow on the unified communications (UC) front as well, which we attribute to movement to the cloud as businesses look for ease of management and flexibility."

Image via Shutterstock

One interesting area of growth was the IP PBX sector, which realized 17 percent year-over-year growth in line shipments. The Asia Pacificregion is largely driving that growth, and hybrid IP PBXs made up about 60 percent of all the lines shipped in the first quarter of the year.

The total global PBX market, including TDM, IP and hybrid PBXs was $1.6 billion in the first quarter, representing a six percent loss over 2014. And the market was down eight percent last year for the same quarter compared to 2013, representing a definitive downward trend.

In more positive news, PBX line shipments increased three percent in the first quarter of the year from the previous year. IHS identified the top telephony vendors as Cisco and Avaya, with Microsoft (News - Alert)  leading in the UC platform market.




Edited by Dominick Sorrentino
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