40 million IP phones to be shipped in 2015

SCOTTSDALE, USA: Global economic challenges have slowed sales of IP phones, but the movement toward IP telephony systems continues, finds In-Stat in its latest report. In 2015, over 40 million IP phones will ship to businesses and consumers.

While corded IP phones remain the standard in business, Wi-Fi/cellular handsets continue to grow. Business Wi-Fi/cellular phone shipments grew by nearly 40 per cent in 2010 over 2009. Shipments of these dual-mode devices approached some 247 million units in 2010. Among the leading handset OEMs in the dual-mode segment, HTC saw the biggest share gain, the report finds.

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“In the past, cellular operators earning their revenue from a per-minute service plan would not support a handset that would use Wi-Fi to move those minutes off of the cellular network, without getting something in return,” says Norm Bogen, VP Research. “Over the past few years, cellular operators have yielded to consumer demand for VoIP services on their cellphones and have formed partnerships with VoIP vendors, such as Skype, to keep traffic on their network.”

Cisco and Avaya are leading the market for enterprise IP phones. Among other major competitors are Aastra, Alcatel-Lucent, LG, Mitel, NEC, Polycom, ShoreTel, and Siemens.

Outside of service provider deployments and Skype, consumer adoption of VoIP has been minimal, the report adds.