The financial crisis may be putting the squeeze on business budgets, but mobile substitution will be a far bigger threat to fixed enterprise voice spend in Western Europe in 2009. Analysys Mason the premier adviser to the telecoms, IT and media industries predicts a decline of 15% in fixed voice spend next year as a result of mobile substitution.
In the report, Fixed–mobile convergence in enterprise voice in Europe: forecasts 2008–2013, Analysys Mason notes that fixed voice providers will find that the global financial crisis will reduce enterprise fixed voice spend by 1–2%. Ultimately, however, mobile substitution will have a far bigger impact on enterprise voice spend.
“Enterprises are finding it cheaper to give staff mobile phones for all their calls than to put a new VoIP phone on a desk,” says the report’s author, Margaret Hopkins. “In addition to this, the financial crisis will increase pressure to conserve cash and make it even less likely that enterprises will install a VoIP PBX when their old phone system ceases to be supported by the vendors.”
Other key findings from the new report include:
- Spend on FMC services, where the mobile phones are seamlessly integrated into the enterprise voice system, will grow at a CAGR of 41% between 2008 and 2013, albeit from a low base, while spend on standalone mobile and fixed voice services will decline by 9% and 15% respectively over the period.
- The economic downturn will boost demand for hosted voice services that eliminate the need for infrastructure investment and deliver short-term cash benefits.
- Because mobile call prices for enterprise customers have fallen to the point where there is little incentive to push calls onto the fixed network, dual-mode cellular Wi-Fi phones are losing their appeal.
- Enterprises are becoming increasingly aware of the benefits of presence management systems, partly as a result of the arrival of Microsoft OCS, and will start to look for presence information systems for both fixed and mobile phones in new deployments.
This report is based on interviews with end users, vendors and service providers, and analyses the demand- and supply-side drivers for FMC adoption as well as the obstacles to be overcome. It also provides detailed forecasts for spend on fixed, mobile and FMC voice services for medium and large enterprises in six countries: France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden and the UK, as well as Western Europe as a whole.
The report is available to purchase online at http://store.analysys.com/, priced at GBP1700 (approximately EUR2010) plus VAT.
