First decrease ever measured for IP Telephony in US

Synergy Research Group, a research firm specializing in quarterly market analysis, reports today some mixed news about VoIP growth during the final quarter of 2004: While the EMEA (Europe/Middle East/Africa) Enterprise IP Telephony market increased 28.1 % sequentially and 88.8% year over year, its U.S. counterpart dipped 3.5%-- "the first decrease ever measured for U.S. Enterprise IP Telephony," according to the firm.

Also noteworthy; "The U.S. market saw 8 vendors post negative sequential growth compared to all vendors in EMEA experiencing positive growth and in many instances that growth being strong double digit. Alcatel, Avaya, and 3Com posted the strongest EMEA growth of 51, 42, and 33 percent."

In a press release, Jeremy Duke, President and CEO at Synergy Research Group, said that seasonal spending alone cannot be driving the EMEA numbers, but unfortunately heoffered no other suggestions. Can the dip in the U.S. VoIP market be also explained by seasonality? Were deployments put on the back burner while IT managers ate turkey and spread holiday cheer? Or is there a bigger story here? Whatever the case may be, these data are a mere slice of the bigger picture,which, ifforecasts are right,looksgood.