Infotech Lead Asia: Huawei will take on Cisco, Microsoft, Samsung, etc. with its eSpace 7900 series IP phone.
Huawei’s main USP: quality IP phones at cost effective prices for enterprises across the world.
Compared to traditional IP phones, eSpace 7900 — which received huge research and design budget from Huawei — offers better voice quality, trendy look and 25 mm thickness.
Huawei will be competing with Cisco, Microsoft, Samsung, etc in the enterprise market with the newly launched IP phones.
According to Infonetics Research, the enterprise PBX phone system market (TDM, hybrid, and pure IP PBXs) reached $2 billion in Q2 2012, down 2.6 percent from the previous quarter and down 1.4 percent from the year-ago 2nd quarter.
Cisco expanded its lead in the global PBX/KTS system market in Q2 2012, with just over a quarter of global revenue.
Microsoft, Samsung, ShoreTel and Mitel posted double-digit sequential growth.
Enterprise telephony market segments showing growth on a year-over-year basis in 2Q12 include pure IP PBXs, unified communication applications, and IP phones.
Recently, Diane Myers, principal analyst for VoIP and IMS at Infonetics Research, said: “The PBX market is down slightly on a global basis in 2Q12, both sequentially and year-over-year, and enterprises generally remain cautious with their spending on telephony equipment. However, sales of PBX systems in North America are up 5 percent from the previous quarter and up 6.4 percent from the year-ago 2nd quarter, and Latin America continues to be a small beacon of light as economies in the region experience growth and new business creation.”
Huawei says eSpace 7900 employs Advanced Audio Coding-Low Delay (AAC-LD) full-band voice codec with a sampling rate as high as 48 kHz, achieving crystal-clear, high-definition (HD) audio performance for better communication.
The eSpace 7900 series includes: eSpace 7910 (a budget-friendly IP phone), eSpace 7950 (a business IP phone), and eSpace 7903X (an expansion module for eSpace 7950).
In August 2012, Michael Vorisek, senior research analyst with IDC, said: “An increasing number of IP PBXs are being installed as part of unified communications and collaboration [UC&C] deployments. In fact, none of the major players in this market would define themselves as IP PBX vendors any longer; instead, they would all position their products in the UC&C space.”
Vendors’ strategic choices for IP PBX architecture, endpoints, and technology alliances are increasingly being defined by their overall UC&C strategies, which in turn will more frequently influence the success or failure IP PBX offerings.
