“2009 continued to be difficult to the end, as the Corded PBX market (excluding Micro PBX products) declined by 10% in Q4 2009 (period October to December 2009 inclusive) compared to Q4 2008.
Overall, more than 13 million extensions were supplied to the market during this time. However, this is an improvement on the rest of the year, where declines of over 20% were registered, with the worst performance recorded in Q1 2009, when volumes dropped by 30%. This means that the year 2009 ends with total volumes down by 22% compared to 2008.
IP desktop deployments continued to gain share accounting for 30% of total extensions in Q4 2009 and 29% for 2009 as a whole. This reflects the fact that hybrid solutions remain significant in the SME segment and retain popularity also with larger enterprises, who have the need to maintain a mix of both analogue/digital and IP desktop extensions.
Overall in 2009, the market worst affected was Eastern Europe, where annual volumes declined more than 50% compared to 2008. Latin America and Middle East and Africa recorded the next most significant declines, at 25% and 21% compared with full year 2008. North America witnessed significant improvements in both Q3 and Q4 2009 compared with full year volumes recording a fall of 20% compared to 2008. Western Europe and APAC regions recorded declines of 18% and 16% respectively compared with full year 2008.
Within Europe, there were significant differences in terms of market decline, with countries including France and the Benelux region recording significantly lower declines than the other countries. Within Europe the Eastern European markets all recorded declines of more than 35% when compared with 2008. In Western Europe notably Denmark, Norway, Ireland, Greece and Spain were particularly badly affected by the economic turmoil.
Cisco continued to lead the Global market in Q4 2009, as they did in the preceding three quarters and took the number one position for 2009 as a whole with a share of 12% of extensions shipped. Panasonic and NEC followed Cisco to take number 2 and 3 positions respectively with 11% share for the full year 2009. However, notably Panasonic retained their global no. 1 position for deployments <100 users. The three leading vendors for 2009 were followed by Avaya, Siemens, Alcatel-Lucent, Nortel, Aastra and Mitel.
There are significant variances in competitive dynamics between the different world regions and also countries within regions. In North America, Cisco takes number 1 position in 2009 followed by Avaya and Nortel. In Latin America, Siemens took number 1 spot followed by Intelbras and Panasonic. In Asia Pacific the situation is very diverse, but the Japanese market’s significance within the APAC region influences strongly. In 2009 NEC took number 1 position in APAC, followed by Panasonic, Samsung, Fujitsu and Cisco.
In EMEA Alcatel-Lucent were the no. 1 vendor in 2009, Aastra no. 2 position, closely followed in a tight pack by Siemens, Panasonic, Cisco and Siemens.