Hosted conferencing services revenue in Asia Pacific touches more than $700 million in 2012.
Frost & Sullivan says the hosted conferencing services will reach $1,418.1 million in 2018.
Uncertain economic outlook compels enterprises to reduce communication expenditure, and consider cost-effective collaborative solutions.
Asia Pacific’s small and medium business (SMB) sector will be the driving force for market revenue.
The report says audio, video and web conferencing solutions will become popular, especially in the SMB sector in developing countries such as India, China, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand.
“Service providers’ efforts to integrate audio, video and web conferencing solutions with larger unified communication solution portfolios will guarantee superior cost performance and customer value, and accelerate uptake,” said Frost & Sullivan ICT Senior Industry Analyst Jessie Yu.
Several emerging telecom markets are not accessible to global hosted conferencing service providers, as telecom regulations favor local providers, thus reducing market scope.
Smaller countries, including Indonesia and the Philippines, are not in the radar of key participants, whose short- to medium-term plans include just key markets such as Australia, Japan and India. Therefore, the low level of competition in smaller countries has made the few solutions available expensive and hard to procure, curbing sale volumes.
Meanwhile, the commoditization of audio conferencing services and the entry of new market participants have resulted in pricing pressures, and along with the significant fall in bandwidth charges, decreased overall market value.
Market saturation in Australia, Singapore and Hong Kong also restrict revenues, and as new deployments get rarer in these markets, emphasis on quality of solutions, unified communication integration, and feature sets has compelled established vendors to acquire new companies and widen their portfolio.
