Small-to-medium-sized businesses (SMBs) across Asia, except Japan, will spend more than $500 million on IP telephony this year, or an increase of 40% over the last year, a report from AMI Partners said.
Overall, SMB spending on IP telephony, including IP Centrex, IP PBX and IP phones/adaptors, is set to experience compound annual growth rates of more than 45% in the next five years, the AMI report also said.
The new research also said that IP telephony, though low in penetration compared to traditional telephony systems, is slowly but surely making strides as a viable telephony alternative.
This is especially significant among medium businesses which need to manage and control their spending on telecommunications, AMI said.
'Within the Asia-Pacific region (excluding Japan), IP telephony will be driven by SMBs in Australia, Singapore, South Korea and New Zealand,' says Cindy Sim, Singapore-based analyst at AMI-Partners. 'The long-term savings that IP telephony can achieve presents a compelling value proposition that IT managers and CIOs cannot ignore. This becomes especially acute for companies that have multiple locations or branches within the country or abroad.'