India Unified Communications and Collaboration (UC&C) market in H2 2014 remained flat, growing -0.1 percent compared to H2 2013.
However, the market showed a decent growth of 6.3 percent over H1 2014 driven by the digital initiatives aimed at decreasing the digital divide and increasing financial including.
The market is expected show tremendous growth from various verticals going forward. The success of the market is attributed to a blend of technology, partner ecosystem, cost competence with marketing. Also, a pro-business environment, inexorable demand for data and need for smart devices have become the cardinal points for the telcos and the enterprises that is pushing them to invest more in infrastructure, said Suman Bisht, market analyst – Enterprise Networking and UC&C.
The increasing adoption of software-based unified solutions is chipping away the share of their hardware-based counterparts, as demand is gravitating towards more vendor-independent infrastructure, the report said.
Among the key segments, the Enterprise Telephony sub-market in India witnessed the highest decline in UC&C market, with -7.9 percent decline year on year. However, the segment witnessed considerable growth of 4.7 percent over H1 2014.
During H2 2014 the market marginally recovered due to the uptake of Pure IP Telephony (Pure IP PBX, IP Phones and Voice Gateways). With the same shift from traditional telephony such as PBX/Key systems and AD phones to IP based telephony, the share of the former segment is on a declining trend.
The Enterprise Collaboration market in India witnessed growth during H2 2015 as compared to the market year-on-year thanks to the growing demand for workforce optimization and interaction. The growth was felt more in segments such as mobility, unified messaging, social media, web and voice conferencing and team collaboration.
The increasing penetration of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is driving the growth in mobility and conferencing solutions. Room based video solutions still remain to be an elite category with more and more desktop and mobility video solutions carving niche in the market.
The Contact Center market in India saw a decline of -2.3 percent in H2 2014 as compared to H2 2013. The segment is very much dependent for growth on the new announcements by the government and expansions/plans by the Telecom operators.
An important segment, the cloud based contact center solutions, is seeing traction across the enterprises, big or small, with the advantages of low initial expenditure. Upcoming verticals like e-commerce, Healthcare and Hospitality along with traditional ones are expected to drive future investments.
Gaurav Sharma, research manager – Enterprise said, “With the advent of 3rd platform based solutions (Ex: UC as a Service), UC&C spending is all set to see an incremental growth. New partnerships and alliances with regional and local players will define the next wave of UC&C investments and market shares in India in the coming quarters.”
Rajani Baburajan
