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North American Audio Conferencing Services Markets
Frost & Sullivan, Dec 2010, Pages: 58
This strategic analysis is part of Frost & Sullivan’s continued coverage of the conferencing and collaboration marketplace. Within this analysis, Frost & Sullivan has identified industry challenges, market drivers, restraints, competitive trends, revenues, market shares, and key market trends, within the North American audio conferencing services market. With extensive primary and secondary research, this analysis provides real-time conferencing and collaboration vendors with a detailed look at the current and changing dynamics in the fast evolving audio conferencing services marketplace.
This Frost & Sullivan research service titled North American Audio Conferencing Services Markets provides an analysis of the factors affecting the markets, discusses the market and technology trends, and offers forecasts and a vendor positioning analysis. In this research, Frost & Sullivan's expert analysts thoroughly examine the following markets: attended (operator-assisted) and unattended (automated).
Market Overview
Bundled Solutions Likely to Phase Out Stand-alone Audio Conferencing Services
Despite being buffeted by the economic downturn in 2009, the North American audio conferencing services markets rebounded admirably, as businesses reduced non-essential travel and opted for audio conferencing instead. However, persistent price pressure, the offer of free audio conferencing services, and competition from unified communications services are expected to bridle the pace of revenue growth. Stand-alone audio conferencing services may well be on their way out, as audio conferencing minutes are being increasingly bundled with other collaboration solutions. The cost and technology barriers to converged conferencing are beginning to pale in front of their overwhelming benefits. Furthermore, their ease of management in a tightly integrated collaboration environment often enhances productivity and thereby, results in wider acceptance of the technology.
In the past, conferencing usage was highly fragmented, as enterprises deployed a combination of technologies and service delivery channels. Consequently, they had to manage a certain percentage of customer premise equipment (CPE) as well as hosted services, which increased complexity and cost. “Businesses that traditionally used disparate services (a combination of hosted services and premises-based equipment) to address their conferencing needs have started consolidating them under a single provider or infrastructure,” says the analyst of this research. “This has benefitted the conferencing service providers (CSPs) that have enhanced their capabilities to offer converged audio, video, web conferencing, and hosted unified communications applications.” Network service providers have started acquiring businesses to build audio, video, and Web capabilities and make the
most of this opportunity.
The mission-critical status of audio conferencing notwithstanding, participants realize that they are functioning in a highly commoditized and competitive market. While core markets are becoming saturated, entry barriers are being lowered, leading to an influx of large and small companies. Remarkably, the markets are witnessing consolidation and fragmentation simultaneously. The top-tier companies are engaging in mergers and acquisitions, while the lower end of the markets is witnessing the entry of a number of small service providers. These emerging companies are compelling incumbents to relent to price pressure, especially with participants offering free audio conferencing services over the Web. Conversely, the Web has become a key tool for providing integrated, value-added services and applications that can be bundled with traditional services.
The markets are likely to continue experiencing competition not only from within, but also from outside, as Web conferencing service companies are incorporating audio conferencing service capabilities to their portfolio. The competition from Internet-based voice over IP (VoIP) service providers and unified communications vendors is also intensifying. “In such a highly competitive market, CSPs that can offer differentiated services at the best possible price points will succeed,” notes the analyst. “CSPs that have linked their services to measurable productivity gains have found greater acceptance in the market.”
Market Sectors
Expert Frost & Sullivan analysts thoroughly examine the following market sectors in this research:
- Attended (operator-assisted)
- Unattended (automated)
Technologies
The following technologies are covered in this research:
- Internet protocol (IP)-based audio conferencing
- Voice over IP (VoIP)
- Web and video conferencing
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