Thursday, January 18, 2007

E-mail Story     Print     Feedback

TelecomWeb: Global Market For Contact Centers Exceeds Forecasts

PR WEB January 18, 2007 Parsippany, N.J.   According to TelecomWeb’s new InfoTrack for Converged Applications “First-Half 2006 Contact Center Report,” global contact-center shipments for the first half of 2006 showed worldwide manufacturer revenues of $1.45 billion, with agent-seat shipments (new and add-on) approaching 1.6 million for that six-month period.

This growth exceeds TelecomWeb’s previous forecast as well as those made by others. The North American market (United States and Canada) continues to be the major source of industry volume, with agent-seat shipments (new and add-on) of slightly fewer than 700,000 for the first half of 2006, annualized to 1.4 million per year and first-half 2006 revenues of $663 million, annualized to more than $1.3 billion per year. Volume already has exceeded the 2004 Frost & Sullivan forecast that the North American market would hit $1.25 billion by 2011.

According to the “First-Half 2006 Contact Center Report,” Avaya led all vendors in three categories (agents, systems and revenues), with first-half 2006 agent shipments of 469,000 (29.5 percent of the market) and revenues of $458 million (31.5 percent of the market). Nortel and Genesys shared second and third place, depending on the measures, while Cisco ranked sixth (based on agents and revenues).

“The volume of telephony-based applications growth is exceeding early estimates and is becoming the focal point of manufacturers’ offers,” says Ken Dolsky, program director for TelecomWeb’s new InfoTrack for Converged Applications program. “We have responded to this trend by creating a new program to track and report application shipments, revenues and trends. In conjunction with our TelecomTactics service that offers detailed side-by-side comparisons of application offers, this provides our clients with much broader coverage of the applications market.”

The “First-Half 2006 Contact Center Report,” the first in the industry to cover 2006 contact-center shipments, includes:

• Global coverage – United States, Canada, APAC, CALA and EMEA
• Shipments (agents and systems) by size category, manufacturer and region

• Revenues by manufacturer and region
• Shipment information on 13 major manufacturers

In addition, the “First-Half 2006 Contact Center Report” provides market share by agent along with systems and revenues for each region.

Individuals interested in viewing the report’s table of contents or in obtaining an executive summary should visit http://www.telecomweb.com/icaccreport07/.

For more information on the state of the contact-center business and to download the free article based on the “First-Half 2006 Contact Center Report,” visit “The Next Generation Contact Center Report” microsite at www.telecomweb.com/ccr.

About the InfoTrack for Converged Applications (ICA) Program

InfoTrack for Converged Applications (ICA) is a market and competitive-intelligence program focused on evolving telephony applications based on IP (converged) technologies. The major categories of applications tracked include Messaging, Contact Center, Unified Communications, Mobility and Conferencing/Collaboration. InfoTrack reports include global and regional information on shipments, manufacturer revenues, market share, forecasts and features/functionality comparisons.

About TelecomWeb

TelecomWeb encompasses global market-intelligence InfoTrack reports; daily e-letter TelecomWeb news break; TelecomWeb wireless, TelecomWeb broadband and TelecomWeb policy content packages; tariff consultancy Tarifica; and the Web-based business-telephony-product database TelecomTactics. To learn more about TelecomWeb, please visit www.TelecomWeb.com.

Contacts:

Sharon Valencik, research & marketing director, 800/610-3109, telecom@telecomweb.com

Craig Born, sales director, 973/602-0123, cborn@telecomweb.com