Skip to main content

Remote Workers Fuel Unified Communications Demand

How agile organizations enable online communication and collaboration for their distributed workforce is top of mind for most senior executives today. More savvy CEOs, across all industries, have rapidly increased investments in IT systems and services that empower employees to work from anywhere.

The global unified communications & collaboration (UC&C) market grew 26.7 percent year-over-year and 6.6 percent quarter-over-quarter to $12.2 billion in the third quarter of 2020 (3Q20), according to the latest worldwide market study by International Data Corporation (IDC).

As enterprise leaders moved their teams from the crisis phase to the recovery phase, in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic, worldwide growth of UC&C applications was driven by organizations across all business types and sizes.

Unified Communications Market Development

The IDC study uncovered a special interest in cloud-based solutions for voice, video, messaging, and collaboration for driving initiatives such as digital transformation projects and the emergence of hybrid working models.

According to the IDC assessment, the increased IT vendor revenue, product shipment, and service subscriber numbers within these segments is proof. Rapid growth was pervasive across the board.

As an example, the UC Collaboration market -- including video conferencing software and cloud services -- increased 46.7 percent year-over-year and 5.3 percent over 2Q20 to reach almost $5.8 billion in revenue, with seats increasing 37.8 percent annually.

Additionally, the Hosted Voice and UC public cloud UCaaS market also did well and grew 23.3 percent year-over-year and 8.3 percent sequentially in 3Q 2020 to reach almost $4.3 billion in revenue.

Within enterprise videoconferencing Systems (video endpoints and infrastructure), traditional room-based video systems declined both 2.3 percent year-over-year and 6.9 percent sequentially.

Smaller huddle room video endpoints and video infrastructure equipment both experienced positive growth in the quarter (72.5 percent year-over-year and 16.8 percent over 2Q20) and (39.6 percent year-over-year and 21.6 percent quarter-over-quarter), respectively.

However, revenue for IP Phones declined both 32.9 percent compared to 3Q19 and 11 percent sequentially.

"In 2020, COVID-19 caused many businesses and organizations to re-think their plans for leveraging digital technologies and accelerated interest in and adoption of solutions such as collaboration, videoconferencing, messaging, and UC as a service (UCaaS), among others," said Rich Costello, senior research analyst at IDC.

Throughout 2021, IDC expects the positive upside growth numbers across these key UC&C segments to continue -- perhaps at slightly more modest rates. We'll have to wait and see.

Outlook for Unified Communications Application Growth

From a geographic perspective, the UC&C market again saw positive results across the globe in 3Q20. In North America (U.S. and Canada), UC&C revenue was up 6.3 percent sequentially and 27.7 percent over 3Q19.

Revenue in Asia-Pacific (including Japan) (APJ) was up 7.1 percent over 2Q20 and 27.7 percent year-over-year. EMEA revenue grew 6.6 percent sequentially and 24.2 percent annually, while Latin America revenue increased 7.2 percent quarter-over-quarter and 30.1 percent year-over-year.

Based on these impressive results, I anticipate that the demand for modern cloud-based communication and collaboration services will continue to gain market share from legacy on-premises systems. That said, enterprise networking -- and secure mobile broadband internet access in particular -- will be a key focal point for CIOs and CTO that must ensure that their corporate data and intellectual property is protected on all end-user devices.

Popular posts from this blog

Digital Talent Demand Exceeds Supply in Asia-Pac

Even the savviest CEO's desire for a digital transformation advantage has to face the global market reality -- there simply isn't enough skilled and experienced talent available to meet demand. According to the latest market study by IDC, around 60-80 percent of Asia-Pacific (AP) organizations find it "difficult" or "extremely difficult" to fill many IT roles -- including cybersecurity, software development, and data insight professionals. Major consequences of the skills shortage are increased workload on remaining digital business and IT employees, increased security risks, and loss of "hard-to-replace" critical transformation knowledge. Digital Business Talent Market Development Although big tech companies' layoffs are making headlines, they are not representative of the overall global marketplace. Ongoing difficulty to fill key practitioner vacancies is still among the top issues faced by leaders across industries. "Skills are difficul

How Cloud Fuels Digital Business Transformation

Across the globe, many CEOs invested in initiatives to expand their digital offerings. User experience enhancements that are enabled by business technology were a priority in many industries. Worldwide end-user spending on public cloud services is forecast to grow 21.7 percent to a total of $597.3 billion in 2023 -- that's up from $491 billion in 2022, according to the latest market study by Gartner. Cloud computing is driving the next phase of digital transformation, as organizations pursue disruption through technologies like generative Artificial Intelligence (AI), Web3, and enterprise Metaverse. Public Cloud Computing Market Development "Hyperscale cloud providers are driving the cloud agenda," said Sid Nag, vice president at Gartner . Organizations view cloud computing as a highly strategic platform for digital transformation initiatives, which requires providers to offer new capabilities as the competition for digital business escalates. "For example, generativ

Mobile Device Market Still Awaiting Recovery

The mobile devices market has experienced three years of unpredictable demand. The global pandemic, geopolitical pressures, supply chain issues, and macroeconomic headwinds have hindered the sector's consistent growth potential. This extremely challenging environment has dramatically affected both demand and supply chains. It has led to subsequent inflationary pressures, leading to a worsening global cost of living crisis suppressing growth and confidence in the sector. In tandem, mobile device industry stakeholders have become more cautious triggering market uncertainties. Mobile Device Market Development Operating under such a backdrop, the development of mobile device ecosystems and vendor landscapes have been impacted severely. Many of these market pressures persisted throughout 2022 and now into 2023, borne chiefly by the smartphone market. According to the latest worldwide market study by ABI Research, worldwide smartphone shipments in 2022 declined 9.6 percent Year-over-Year