Despite NBN hype, corporate video conferencing revenue is dropping

While the National Broadband Network has been sold, in part, on its ability to deliver video conferencing, new figures show that worldwide video conferencing equipment revenues fell during the first quarter of 2013.

New IDC figures show a 13.2% decline year-on-year and a 21.9% drop quart-on-quarter.

The decline was greatest in North America (20.3%), followed by Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) on 10.1%, the Asia-Pacific region (9.1%) and Latin America (3.5%).

“Videoconferencing vendors point to longer procurement cycles, the still challenging macroeconomic situation in EMEA, and a slowdown in IT spending in some key global markets such as China and India as reasons for the challenging first quarter results,” says Rich Costello, a senior analyst of enterprise communications infrastructure at IDC.

“No doubt these are certainly valid reasons for the recent quarterly decreases in video equipment revenue we are seeing. In addition, IDC believes that increasing customer considerations over more software-centric solutions, virtualization, cloud-based offerings, and real-time browser-based communications are beginning to challenge the video equipment market as well.”

Cisco is currently the market leader in the video conferencing market, claiming 43.4% of the market.