Monday, June 29, 2009

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T3i Group Report Says U.S. Small Businesses Continue To Be Important IP Telephony Sales Targets

Parsippany, NJ, June 29, 2009 – Despite the economic downturn, the just-released T3i Group “InfoTrack for Enterprise Communications 1Q09 Report for North America” shows U.S.-based small businesses (those that use between two and 100 telephone lines) continue to be a target market for all major telephony system manufacturers that want to sell IP Telephony (IPT) replacements for traditional key systems. 

T3i Group’s research found total U.S. IPT license shipments decreased 23 percent during the first quarter of 2009 when compared with the first quarter of 2008; the small-business segment stayed steady at 37 percent of the overall U.S. market. However, very small businesses, defined as those using between two and 40 lines, gained 5 percentage points while the 41-to-100-line market segment fell 5 percent.

The top seven manufacturers vying for the U.S. small-business market -- Avaya, Cisco, Mitel, NEC, Nortel, Panasonic and Toshiba -- hold approximately 85 percent of total market share in that size segment. “They have the advantage of large installed bases of satisfied customers, more highly trained and adept channel partners, and R&D efforts generating a continuous stream of unified-communications (UC) applications,” commented Susan Hobart, President of T3i Group. “They differentiate their offerings of UC apps by virtualized servers (available across the corporate-user network) and by bundling around their life-cycle services. These differentiators permit the server to be CPE, datacenter-located, or hosted -- all with software maintenance included.” In addition, Mitel and NEC offer CPE leasing.

Mitel also took the lead in market share growth, increasing its 1Q09 IPT small-business segment share by 1.18 percentage points compared with 1Q08.  The next major competitor was NEC, which increased its share by .73 percentage points. Nortel, Avaya and Cisco all lost IPT market share year over year.

T3i Group has been monitoring new product introductions in its TelecomTactics division, the analysis of which indicates many recent IPT offerings aim at the lower end. Here are a few notables:

• Traditional key system manufacturer Panasonic entered the converged small-business segment with its KX-NCP500 pure-IP packet-switched and KX-TDA50 IP-enabled products.
• Toshiba plans to introduce its Strata CIX1200, bundled with application enhancements all on a single server this quarter.
• Mitel’s 5000 IP platform (the former Inter-Tel 5000) supports SIP trunking, unified messaging, speech auto attendant, and audio and Web conferencing.
• Avaya enhanced the Mobility Features license for IP Office to include One-X Mobile Client for SMB, and new GUI for Windows Mobile 5/6 and Symbian devices.

For more information about “InfoTrack for Enterprise Communications 1Q09 Report for North America," go to http://www.telecomweb.com/marketresearch/enterprisecomm/ or contact Bonnie Fairbrother (bfairbrother@t3igroup.com, 973/602-0181).

About T3i Group LLC

T3i Group LLC provides market research, data, analysis, and consulting and advisory services to the telecommunications industry. It has clients in 46 countries and conducts its business through four operating units: InfoTrack publishes reports that analyze shipment, revenue, market share and other pertinent data of importance to telecommunications equipment manufacturers; TelecomTactics maintains a database of the features and functionality of major telephony systems; Tarifica maintains a database of pricing-related information covering 400 telecommunications carriers operating in 130 countries; and TelecomWeb (www.t3igroup.com) serves as T3i Group’s primary delivery mechanism for distributing its reports, analyses and data to subscribers.

T3i Group LLC is headquartered in Parsippany, N.J., with additional offices in New York City; London, England; and Cherry Hill, N.J.