UC Desktop Prices Drop in Q1

Average selling prices in the UC desktop market, which has been holding steady over the past six months, dropped slightly in Q1 2009.

This weakening indicates the growing competitive nature of the industry, according to the authors of a Synergy Research Group report on the global market for collaborative applications.

The study found vendor sales down generally for the first quarter of 2009 in both the enterprise and SMB market segments.

It showed that collaboration application vendors had sales of USD $913.3 million for the first quarter.

Avaya, Cisco and Siemens were the top three vendors in the enterprise category, and ShoreTel, Cisco and Avaya lead the SMB category.

While Jeremy Duke, CEO, Synergy, said these companies are in strong strategic positions in their respective markets, the top six vendors in both segments experienced quarter-over-quarter sales declines.

There is also a growing interest in managed UC offerings as small business suffer decreased credit availability.

Interesting trends spotted in the Q1 2009 and analyzed in the Synergy report include:

• Social Networking continues to be a hot topic of discussion as UC vendors look to interface or incorporate Social Networking applications into their UC offerings.
• Conferencing bucked the decreasing trend in collaborative applications by growing revenues 7 per cent quarter-over-quarter. This is on top of a 5 per cent growth in revenues in Q4. Conferencing (web, video and audio) still shows good growth as corporations continue to spend on technologies that are perceived to have relatively short-term returns on investment and a positive effect on employee efficiencies.