The advancement of reliable, high-quality, scalable, real-time, feature-rich, and affordable cloud services is driving adoption, convergence, and expansion of the cloud video collaboration market in the Asia-Pacific region.
While newer and agile cloud services are giving providers the flexibility to fuel the direction of next-generation video conferencing, innovation accompanied by a complete overhaul of business models is required for video conferencing device vendors to match pace with evolving market trends. Multi-purpose devices and interoperable cloud offerings are driving the consumption of video across both enterprises and SME.
In 2017, cloud video conferencing services recorded strong growth of 43.1% in Asia Pacific region. Frost & Sullivan expects the total video collaboration market to grow at a CAGR of 11.3% from 2018–2022 with cloud video conferencing services, conference USB cameras, and virtual events key growth drivers.
“Cloud, mobility, and innovative use cases are set to drive new growth opportunities within the Asia-Pacific video collaboration market with cloud penetration rates to be around 30% by 2022,” Frost & Sullivan research manager for ICT Jessie Yu said.
“Vertically customized solutions and video analytics will become strong areas for differentiation and new growth opportunities,” she added.
To gain a competitive advantage in an evolving market, Yu recommends cloud vendors focus on product innovation to support compatibility with Skype for Business or Cisco Spark and offer a comprehensive yet flexible approach to cloud services.
Frost suggests seven ways to ride the growth opportunities in the Asia-Pacific cloud video collaboration market:
- Identify key target verticals as a priority, collaborating with local telcos to approach specific industry verticals and use cases;
- Ensure a seamless audio, video, and content-sharing experience by providing flexible tools that can be adapted and personalized to customer needs;
- Provide agile business models that can target small-medium businesses and mid-market customers;
- Change user behavior by adding value to mobility capabilities;
- Forge new partnerships with a wide range of companies across business process management, team collaboration and social networking;
- Adopt new business models such as consumerization of IT, freemium, mobile-first, bring-your-own-app, and unbundling of products and services;
- Reduce bandwidth usage, complexity and costs, and enhance simplification of entire user and meeting experience, including procurement, deployment/installation, utilization, and aftersales services.
“Furthermore, players should explore different strategies to enter the market; for example, local channel partnerships, all-in-one UC/collaboration bundles, freemium deals, eCommerce, and free trials. This will enhance their customer base and reinforce the advantages of video conferencing,” noted Yu.