Skip to main content

Market Upside for Voice-Centric IP Phones

The Internet Protocol (IP) phone market is actually a tale of two drastically different markets -- business and consumer -- with the former thriving and the latter diverging in a drastically different direction, according to the latest study by In-Stat.

By 2012, 31 million voice-centric business IP phones will ship. However, the consumer side of the market is radically different. Among voice-centric IP phones, businesses will outpace consumers more than ten to one.

The nascent consumer market for voice-centric IP phones is being subjugated by the introduction of IP media phones, such as the Verizon Hub and AT&T HomeManager that support both IP communications, as well as delivery of Internet information and multimedia content.

IP-based communication is replacing TDM networks at a steady pace in the workplace, but adoption is slow among consumers. Even where Voice over IP (VoIP) is being used in the home, many consumers don't realize it because IP-based cable voice services are marketed as traditional PSTN voice offerings, supported by traditional analog telephones.

"Within the business market, corded IP phones remain the standard, and will continue to dominate the enterprise IP phone market through 2012," says Norm Bogen, In-Stat analyst. "However, WLAN and IP DECT phones continue to grow, especially within some specific vertical and geographical markets."

In-Stat's market study found the following:

- Cisco, Avaya, and Nortel are leading the market for enterprise IP phones.

- Wi-Fi integration in cellular phones is growing rapidly; however, the majority of Wi-Fi/cellular phones are not designed for VoIP.

- Uniden holds top market share for consumer IP corded phones.

Popular posts from this blog

The Billions Bet on Tentative AI Demand

Gartner's latest worldwide IT spending forecast exposes a trend every CIO has already felt in budget negotiations. Total spending will climb 14.2 percent in 2026, reaching $6.37 trillion. It seems that the IT infrastructure market is simply having a strong year. However, the more useful insight is how unevenly that growth is distributed. The Headline Number vs. The Real Story Data center systems and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) are absorbing capital at a pace several multiples faster than devices, communications services, and traditional IT services. This is not incremental growth spread across a healthy portfolio. It is a wholesale reallocation of enterprise technology budgets toward AI infrastructure, made on the expectation that demand for AI workloads will justify the outlay before that demand has been fully proven. Where the Money is Going Data center systems are forecast to grow 62.5 percent in 2026, that's up from 51.6 percent growth in 2025, reaching $822 billion....