Asia PBX market revenue up 29pc y-o-y in 2Q11

CALIFORNIA, USA: The Private branch exchange (PBX) market in Asia Pacific is proving resilient amidst the turmoil and sequential ups and downs of other regions, with four straight quarters of sequential PBX revenue growth. PBX revenue in Asia Pacific is up 29 per cent year-over-year (2Q11 vs. 2Q10), finds market research firm Infonetics Research.

In its second quarter 2011 (2Q11) Enterprise Unified Communication, VoIP, and TDM Equipment vendor market share report, the analyst firm also finds that global PBX/KTS phone system revenue declined 2.3 per cent sequentially in 2Q11 to $2.02 billion. However, is up 3.9 per cent from a year ago (2Q10), continuing its path of slow and steady recovery on year-over-year basis.

"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 unified communications solutions," says Diane Myers, directing analyst, VoIP and IMS, Infonetics Research..

For the third quarter in a row, Avaya came out on top in the overall PBX market, with about a quarter of worldwide revenue in the second quarter of 2011, helped by steady shipments and healthy average selling prices. Cisco maintains its strong second position despite a slight lead in overall line shipments.

Unified Communications (UC) revenue increased 2.3 per cent sequentially in 2Q11 to $112.4 million on the strength of Microsoft UC solutions that continue to gain in deployments worldwide.

Aastra, Mitel and ShoreTel are the only vendors posting positive PBX revenue gains in 2Q11 over 1Q11. Pure IP PBXs, the fastest growing segment, saw line shipments grow 10.6 per cent over 2Q10.

Meanwhile, the economic situation in North America and EMEA continues to assert pressure on the enterprise telephony segment, particularly at the lower end of the market, as businesses in both regions are slow to add employees and are generally holding off on upgrades.