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Cisco relies on IP PBX equipment and reaps enormous gains

Waghaeusel, 9 January 2012
Companies in Germany change manufacturers of their telephone private branch exchanges (PBX) surprisingly often. Those who profit the most are providers who help implement unified communications and collaboration strategies. Cisco in particular, relies on these growth drivers in the area of enterprise telephony to ensure a significant gain. In contrast, market giants Siemens and Avaya have to accept losses due to customers leaving. This was revealed in a survey on installed PBX telephone equipment carried out by ama, the ICT information provider, from March to October 2011, in which a total of 4,956 ICT supervisors participated. Only companies with more than 50 employees were included.

In the highly competitive ICT sub-segment market, Siemens, Alcatel-Lucent and Avaya are the dominant manufacturers. They make up almost 72% of the 4,985 installations researched by ama. The rest is divided between Aastra, Telekom and Cisco with just under 20%. The smaller manufacturers account for only around 8% of all PBX telephone installations.

The market analysis showed Cisco, the smallest of the six large manufacturers, to be a clear winner. It was the only manufacturer that did not lose one single customer within the period examined and gained a total of 65 new installations. Along with Cisco as the undisputed winner, Aastra and Alcatel-Lucent could also show a net growth. At the same time, providers are benefitting from the fact that German business users are all too ready to switch. The analysis shows that 582 new PBX installations are only purchased 108 times with by the same provider; this corresponds to a switch rate of over 80%.

Companies like Avaya, Siemens and Telekom are being negatively impacted by the frequent switching. To some extent, these manufacturers had to deal with a considerable decrease in customers. Surprisingly, the global player Avaya had the biggest percentage drop in terms of its total share of PBX installations in Germany. In absolute numbers, Siemens lost the most with a net 66 installations. Axel Hegel, ama partner and CEO, says that "the reason for the market leaders' high absolute losses could be attributed to the accelerated change to the next generation of the private branch exchanges. Many large and medium-sized companies already transport data and voice services over the same IP-based network. Consequently, Siemens is more subject to competition from the original IT networking companies, like Cisco."

The findings have been summarised in a whitepaper, which can be requested for free in PDF format at wp@ama-adress.de or http://www.ama-adress.de/whitepaper-anfordern. The next ama analysis, which discusses the antivirus application market, will be published in February 2012.

PDF-icon | download the article (pdf, 18 KB)

PDF-icon | Press Release published Computer Reseller News-03-12 (pdf, 300 KB)


Author: ama GmbH

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