Comms4Business News

Q3 2008 was a weaker quarter in North America, Eastern Europe and Western Europe. Western Europe suffered the greatest drop as the largest Western European markets, namely the UK, France and Germany drop by between 4% and 9%. Meanwhile, all Nordic markets, advanced in IP, experienced slower quarters. Siemens and Alcatel-Lucent remain the strongest manufacturers in Western Europe. Eastern European markets dropped by an average of 10%, with Russia suffering the greatest setback in terms of the volume of extensions deployed when compared to the same period last year. Other Eastern European markets also declined, with Hungary in particular experiencing noticeable difficulties.

On the other hand, the Middle East and Africa, Latin America and Asia Pacific all experienced moderate to very good levels of growth. The biggest surprise was Latin America, where some larger accounts contributed to high levels of growth in the above 100 extensions market. This means that Latin America represented 9% of the overall global market compared to 7% previously. Middle East and Africa increased by 5% and Asia Pacific by 3%. The North American market suffered an almost negligible decline as Cisco remain the market leader for a third consecutive quarter. Cisco is followed by Avaya and then Nortel in third position.

Global IP Extensions Market

North America continues to represent the greatest proportion of IP deployments at a global level and the IP market continued to demonstrate healthy levels of growth as it increased by 16% in Q3 2008 compared to Q3 2007. The penetration of IP into total extensions remains at around 50%, compared to just under 28% in Western Europe and ahead of the global average, which is still less than 25%. The greatest increase in IP was witnessed this time in Latin America as a result of activity in the enterprise space, while Eastern Europe, Western Europe and Asia Pacific all demonstrated double digit growth of between 15% and 24%.