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This enhanced environmental responsibility, combined with general economic pressures and increasing airfare and fuel prices, are making a solid case for audio conferencing and thereby, bridges.
New analysis from Frost & Sullivan (conferencing.frost.com), World Audio Conferencing Bridge Markets, finds that the market earned revenues of $116.3 million in 2007 and estimates this to reach $200.0 million in 2014.
If you are interested in a virtual brochure, which provides manufacturers, end users, and other industry participants with an overview of the world audio conferencing bridge markets, then send an email to Mireya Castilla, Corporate Communications, at mireya.castilla[.]frost.com, with your full name, company name, title, telephone number, company email address, company website, city, state and country. Upon receipt of the above information, an overview will be sent to you by email.
A huge market influencer is the ongoing drive toward greater globalization and virtualization, which has heightened the need for geographically dispersed businesses to communicate effectively. Audio conferencing vendors are expected to seize this opportunity to address the requirement for economical and real-time communication solutions for long-distance business collaboration.
Moreover, vendors have been discontinuing support of legacy time division multiplexing (TDM) systems that are reaching the end of their lives and are instead focusing on Internet Protocol (IP)-based systems, infusing fresh life into the market and aiding greater adoption.
"The ongoing transition to IP, increased focus by businesses on using collaborative solutions, and spotlight on unified communications are offering new growth opportunities as well as challenges to audio conferencing vendors," says Frost & Sullivan Industry Analyst Krithi Rao. "Like other conferencing markets, the audio conferencing bridge market is undergoing a transformation in product features, functionality, and end-user needs as it becomes a key element in implementing a collaborative workplace."
Furthermore, port shipments of audio conferencing bridges are expected to continue to rise rapidly; however, this could be partially offset by the continuous price erosion. Bridge vendors will have to bear the brunt of the onset of reservationless services and commoditization in the audio conferencing services market, as service providers are very likely to transfer this price pressure to them, causing revenue growth to lag behind shipment growth.
"The market is quickly adopting a new generation of IP-based, larger port capacity, flexible audio conferencing solutions that comprise IP-based media servers working along with low-cost application servers," observes Rao. "Further, as audio conferencing gets rolled into a complete solution with IP telephony, messaging, audio, video, and web conferencing, calendaring, and eventually, unified communications, vendors will experience greater price pressures."Nevertheless, once audio conferencing becomes integrated with a larger communications suite, a wider feature set will aid assimilation with other unified communications applications, guaranteeing a constant stream of demand and revenue.
The amplified demand for collaboration services in Europe, Middle East, Africa, and the Asia Pacific and Central and Latin America, where audio conferencing is not heavily commoditized, will provide market participants with significant global growth opportunities. To cash in on the potential business prospects from the briskly evolving markets of both service providers and enterprise segments, audio conferencing solution vendors must continuously improve the simplicity of provisioning, ease-of-use, and management to facilitate additional call usage, thereby saving time and costs for customers.
"The availability of easy-to-use software-based low-cost bridge solutions that meet the needs of the small and medium business (SMB) segment further expands the target market," notes Rao. "As conferencing applications gather speed to reach critical mass during the next few years, Frost & Sullivan expects the audio conferencing bridge market to benefit as well."
World Audio Conferencing Bridge Markets is part of the Conferencing & Collaboration Growth Partnership Service program, which also includes research in the following markets: videoconferencing endpoint markets, videoconferencing infrastructure system markets, world tabletop endpoint markets, videoconferencing services, web conferencing, telepresence markets, and unified communications markets. All research services included in subscriptions provide detailed market opportunities and industry trends that have been evaluated following extensive interviews with market participants. Interviews with the press are available.
Frost & Sullivan (frost.com), the Growth Partnership Company, partners with clients to accelerate their growth. The company's TEAM Research, Growth Consulting and Growth Team Membership™ empower clients to create a growth-focused culture that generates, evaluates and implements effective growth strategies. Frost & Sullivan employs over 45 years of experience in partnering with Global 1000 companies, emerging businesses and the investment community from more than 30 offices on six continents.
World Audio Conferencing Bridge Markets
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