The COVID-19 Pandemic Impacted User Preferences for Communications Endpoints, Disrupting Desktop and Cordless Phone Sales
The desktop and cordless phone market decreased by 19.0 percent in 2020 in terms of revenues to $2.79 billion, and by 16.7 percent in terms of unit shipment to 24.7 million. The pandemic, lockdowns, and work-from-home mandates have notably impacted the market in terms of demand, delivery, and potential installation of devices in customer sites. Many users that were forced to work from home on short notice were provisioned software-based communication and collaboration services, in addition to headsets and web cams, whether consumer- or business-grade. Almost all vendors saw delays in projects, longer lead times, and component shortages in different product stock-keeping units (SKUs) in 2020. Confronted with new pandemic realities, many desktop and cordless phones vendors found the need to quickly and promptly resolve a series of issues to get back to business, including: actions to enhance safety measures for employees at manufacturing facilities; ensuring a certain degree of continuity in the supply chain; making necessary changes in existing product features, specs, and pricing; accelerating new product launches; and modifying their channel structure. The landscape evolved during 2H of 2020, where facilities started to gradually open up and businesses began to plan more strategically about their endpoints, particularly during the last quarter of the year. Some extension-centric people (e.g., sales staff) that were forced to use software communications and collaboration services have showed fatigue, after some time, demanding the return to desktop phones with power supplies at their home to help them in their daily business.
Sectors such as healthcare and e-commerce logistics have started to gradually request more adequate, purpose-fit cordless phones to help them in their increasing demands of their daily jobs. While, at first, accessing the customers’ premises was a problem for vendors and channel partners, this was effectively dealt with by the end of 2020 through an enhanced retail supply chain. By the first half of 2021, more businesses started to plan a return to the office, with the number of quote requests and consequent orders for desktop and cordless phones rising in Q1 and Q2.While the market is expected to gradually decrease through the years, the industry will continue to see desktop and cordless phone deployments across the world.
This study provides an in-depth analysis of the enterprise desktop and cordless phone market. Desktop phones covered include TDM desktop phones and IP desktop phones. Within the IP desktop phone category, the study also analyzes the market of open SIP phones, proprietory IP phones, and IP video desktop phones. Cordless phones covered include DECT phones and VoWLAN/Wi-Fi phones. Forecasts and market shares are given for all major phone segment and sub-segments. The study also discusses the state of the market; major drivers and restraints affecting the market; trends; top predictions; and major growth opportunities. The study also takes a look at the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic and the resulting economic hardship on hardware phone adoption.
