Travel Savings and Productivity Gains Propel World Videoconferencing Endpoint Markets, Finds Frost & Sullivan

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., May 11 /PRNewswire/ -- Although the floundering economy had a negative impact on the global videoconferencing endpoint market, the value proposition of videoconferencing as both a tool to help reduce travel and a productivity enabler was considerably enhanced. Accordingly, after a short-term period of slower ramp-up growth, the market is poised to gather steam with increasing globalization, mobile workforce enablement, and the expected greenfield deployments among small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), an area that is currently underpenetrated.

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New analysis from Frost & Sullivan (http://www.conferencing.frost.com), World Videoconferencing Endpoint Markets, finds that the market earned revenues of over $1.25 billion in 2009 and is estimated to reach $3.13 billion in 2015.

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"While the market did not grow in terms of actual revenues, 2009 was a momentous year for the heightening of awareness and mindshare for videoconferencing in enterprise communications," says Frost & Sullivan Principal Analyst Roopam Jain. "Cisco's acquisition of Tandberg and Logitech's acquisition of LifeSize brought video into the spotlight and further into the mainstream enterprise communications market."

The effect of the economic slowdown has been a double-edged sword. On one hand, economic troubles have bought cost saving technologies like videoconferencing to the forefront and has helped companies cut travel and facilities costs to support a more virtual workplace. On the other hand, a majority of companies have hunkered down and slashed IT budgets to avoid new investments during financial crises. With the latter having a stronger impact, the global videoconferencing endpoint market saw a small decline in revenues in 2009. The year 2010 is of cautious optimism for both customers and vendors.

The upheavals in the competitive landscape have also forced some customers to take a wait-and-see approach when it comes to choosing their video vendor. A significant development impacting market dynamics is the increased emphasis on interoperability and the emergence of telepresence (TP) as a distinct segment, but one that still needs to work within the corporate visual collaboration product spectrum. Customers are now becoming increasingly aware that telepresence is capable of delivering greater ROI when connecting to the rest of the video investments and the larger enterprise communication infrastructure.

End users are demanding that their telepresence solutions not only operate seamlessly with their existing video and other enterprise communications systems, but also communicate with other visual solutions beyond the corporate boundaries. Interoperability between the different video solutions is vital for the uptake of video. Where there is no direct interoperability, the market does offer interim gateway-type solutions to solve the interoperability problem today. However, deploying many of these point products increases the total cost of ownership and is not very efficient. As vendors work on resolving the different interoperability challenges natively, customers will be more convinced about the ROI of their end-to-end video investment.

As customers look past the hype surrounding telepresence and consider large-scale deployments of different forms of visual communication products, vendors must make renewed efforts to educate customers on the benefits of video and the product choices available. The need for ad-hoc communication and collaboration is revving up the attraction quotient for videoconferencing. Vendors must identify geographic regions, verticals, and niche markets in which these drivers are playing a critical role to increase their market share.

"A large portion of the $787 billion stimulus package has been earmarked for technology initiatives and investments, especially within the public sector, education and health care industries, all of which are becoming avid video users," says Jain. "Vendors will need to revisit their channel partner strategies in these verticals in order to take advantage of the impending adoption."

World Videoconferencing Endpoint Markets is part of the Conferencing & Collaboration Growth Partnership Services program, which also includes research in the following markets: Videoconferencing Infrastructure System Markets, Audio Conferencing Bridge Markets, Audio Conferencing Services Market, Telepresence Markets, Web Conferencing Software Markets, and Web Conferencing Services Markets. All research services included in subscriptions provide detailed market opportunities and industry trends that have been evaluated following extensive interviews with market participants.

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World Videoconferencing Endpoint Markets

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SOURCE Frost & Sullivan