Economic Slow-Down Affects Business Telephony Shipments in 2008

As a result of worldwide economic downturn, global line shipments were down 6 percent compared to 2007, new research published by T3i Group has found.
The report, “Global Info Track for Enterprise Communications Full Year 2008 Report,” states that the price per line also decreased significantly. Last year, global manufacturer revenues totaled $15.2 billion, which is a dip of 8 percent from 2007.
Also, for the first time, Cisco led the worldwide field in annual shipments, followed by Nortel and Avaya. During the last four years, Cisco and Alcatel-Lucent were the only two vendors who saw global line-shipment growth.
The report also finds that the Asia Pacific (APAC) region was the hardest hit last year. Shipments in this region fell 13.5 percent year over year, and revenue was around $3.5 billion.
In Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), line shipments were down 1 percent compared to 2007. Alcatel-Lucent reported a 3-percent growth and led EMEA’s 2008 shipments while Siemens—with its direct channels, led the region in revenues.
In comparison to other global markets, the report finds that the Caribbean and Latin America (CALA) region produced consistent growth last year as line shipment was up more than 2 percent in this region.
Bob Olson, Voice Technologies Analyst at T3i Group and author of the report, said that APAC had the lowest percentage of IP shipment penetration compared with other regions because the infrastructure to support IP telephony is not yet available in developing countries within that region.
Olson also said that because of the current global economic condition, the CAPEX to fund infrastructure build-out also vanished.
Eighty-two percent of North American line shipments in 2008 were IP, the highest of any region, followed by Western Europe at 78 percent and Eastern Europe at 59 percent.