IP telephony market rings loud in AP

The Asia-Pacific Internet Protocol (IP) telephony equipment market, excluding Japan, has chalked up US$150 million in revenue for the second quarter of 2005, registering a 28 percent growth over the previous quarter, according to IDC.

The growth, which had occurred despite the traditional market remaining stagnant, signals that the region's IP telephony market is heading in the direction of the global marketplace.

Australia and New Zealand are at the region's forerunners in the migration to IP, says IDC, accounting for more than 50 percent of the total IP telephony revenues.

The overall telephony equipment market in the Asia-Pacific is evolving from a very fragmented commoditised market, to one where fewer, but stronger global brands are emerging to dominance, according to the research firm. However, the region is still seeing the strong presence of a large number of local brands, specially in large markets such as India, China and Korea.

Susana Vidal, senior analyst for telecommunications, IDC Asia-Pacific, explained: "The battlefield for the Asia-Pacific market in the following year will be concentrated in advanced IP markets like Australia and New Zealand, and large markets like India and China.

"Equipment vendors will also need to aggressively defend against product commoditisation and price erosion with more feature-rich products, software and services to complement these solutions," she said.

Among the IP telephony vendors, Avaya leads the regional market in terms of revenues for the first half of 2005, followed by Cisco Systems, Nortel and Alcatel.

Avaya's lead comes from major customer wins in Australia, China, India, Korea and the Philippines, including US$900,000 deal with PricewaterhouseCoopers in China, and across various industry verticals such as finance, professional services and government. Cisco occupied the second spot in the overall IP telephony market, with major customer wins in countries such as Australia, China, India, Korea and Malaysia.