Abstract

Video/Media Phone to Spur High-end Product Shipment in 2011

In the past, IP phone was envisaged as a solution to help reduce voice communications costs. Nowadays, with increasing bandwidth, which helps solve the spectrum scarcity issue, and with growing awareness of carbon emissions, video-based communications seem to offer new solutions to reduce the impact of business trips on the living environment while reducing the corporate spending on business trips in terms of administration and transportation costs. Especially, in the face of the acts of God such as Europe's volcanic ashes crisis in 2010, video-based communications helped solve the problem when it is virtually impossible to have face-to-face communications.

With fundamental IT infrastructure and environment being mature enough to support video-based communications, video quality thus plays a primary factor determining whether the video-based communications market will take off or not. In addition, telepresence which features high quality transmission technology and the sense of presence helps open new business opportunities in the video communications market as well. Other than the use of telepresence in large-sized conference rooms, Cisco has incorporated telepresence solutions into its desktop IP phones. It is anticipated that there will be a flurry of telepresence IP phone-like products available in the market and of IP phones with other video communications features. This is expected to spur enterprise desktop IP phone shipments while providing new business opportunities in this specific product segment.

Other than video-based communications, enterprise desktop IP phone will become a new device for users to access multimedia content, including video and music content, while browsing through internet and accessing to application stores based on the Google Android open-source platform. In addition, with enhanced multimedia applications, enterprise desktop IP phones are expected to have room to provide value-added services, thereby enriching the enterprise communications market. Meanwhile, the addition of multimedia services is likely to help enterprises to develop more new products and generate more revenues in the already mature IP phone market.

With the concepts of video communications and multimedia applications becoming prevalent in the enterprise communications market, the hardware specifications of enterprise desktop IP phones are expected to be upgraded to higher levels, for example the inclusion of 3.5-inch color touch-screen display, over 1MP digital camera, and the support of wireless transmissions technologies such as HD voice and HD video. Driven by improved product specifications, enterprise desktop IP phone shipment value is expected to see a boost.

UC Applications Entering the Enterprise Communications Segment; Conceptualization of UC Phones

UC applications have been adopted for several years in the market but the share remains relatively small. This is attributing to several factors such as that most enterprises are unable to bear costs generated from new system installations, may have security concerns over UC applications, may encounter frustrations caused by unfamiliarity with equipment, software and/or other technologies. Furthermore, many enterprises may face other problems such as the lack of visibility on IT cost efficiency and lack of popularization of high-speed broadband networks. In the recent two years, with the availability of network infrastructure, network communications manufacturers have been dedicated to integrating communications applications in order to tap new revenue sources as well as a new market niche. Nowadays, hardware and software technologies continue to evolve and thus enlighten the feasibility of incorporating UC applications to desktop IP phones.

As regards the development of enterprise desktop IP phones, the hurdles related to installation costs of new systems, network management, and/or operating efficiency have been solved in the recent years. IP phones are moving into the mainstream in the office. In addition, as more and more enterprises have begun to see UC applications as a value-added service for IP phones, the integration of UC applications thus have inevitably become a must-have feature for enterprise desktop IP phones. As a result, UC phones are expected to be one of key factors boosting enterprise desktop IP phone shipment in the future. According to Microsoft, within the next three years, over half of IP phones will provide value-added services instead of the voice-based service alone. It is therefore predicted that the share of video phones and UC phones in the overall enterprise desktop IP phone market volume will go higher in the near future.

Appendix

Glossary of Terms

List of Companies