No Surprise: IP PBX Sales Outpace Legacy PBXs

Legacy PBX sales continue to slow down as their IP successors take precedence, according to new statistics from Infonetics Research.

The global PBX market is typically down in the first quarter following a strong fourth quarter, and the first quarter of 2011 was no exception as the overall market dipped 2.6 percent, dragged down by slowing TDM PBX sales as businesses continue to shift to IP,” said Diane Myers, directing analyst for VoIP and IMS at Infonetics.

The good news, Myers added, is that the quarter was up 8.5 percent over 2010s first quarter, signaling a return to stability.”

Overall, the enterprise telephony and unified communications (UC) equipment market including TDM PBX, KTS, IP PBX, IP phones, VoIP gateways and UC applications totaled $2.52 billion in 2011s first quarter. That was down 4 percent from the fourth quarter of 2010. North Americas enterprise telephone equipment revenue was down 1 percent while Asia Pacific posted a 7 percent gain.

When it comes to manufacturers, Avaya maintained its lead in the PBX market for the second consecutive quarter, Infonetics found. Cisco Systems Inc. leads the UC market and NEC had a strong quarter thanks to sales in the Asia Pacific region. NEC, ShoreTel and Siemens all did well in the pure IP PBX segment, Infonetics said.