VoIP Services Market Nears $50 Billion

Hard economic times during the past several years slowed growth in the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and unified communications markets, but the trend is reversing, thanks in large part to a growing uptake among businesses, according to a new report by Infonetics Research.

The report indicates that the VoIP services market reached $49.8 billion in 2010, up 43 percent from $34.8 billion in 2008. The total VoIP services market is expected to grow to $74.5 billion by 2015, according to the report.

According to information contained in the report, residential services still form the bulk of the VoIP market (at 69 percent of total revenue), and the number of residential VoIP subscribers increased 19 percent in 2010 to 157 million worldwide.

The business VoIP services market, however, is growing at faster rates, with the fastest growing segments being in SIP trunking and unified communications telephony. Based on healthy demand for cloud-based services, the number of seats for IP Centrex and hosted UC services grew 20 percent in 2010.

Infonetics also noted that managed IP PBX business VoIP service revenue is expected to more than double from 2010 to 2015.

"The VoIP service market weathered the economic turmoil of the last couple of years,” says Diane Myers, directing analyst for VoIP and IMS at Infonetics Research. “While the residential services segment remains the largest of the market...business VoIP services are growing at faster rates; a notable example: SIP trunking had a breakout year with 143 percent revenue growth in 2010.”