VoIP technologies in use today

Now that Steve’s 2003 VoIP State-of-the-Market Report has been out for a little over a month, we’re going to dig a bit more deeply into some of the background results that were not reported. For the next couple of newsletters, we’re addressing the question of which market segments seem to be good bets for success, and which ones aren’t.

Specifically, the questionnaire asked respondents to indicate their plans for production (not test or trial) use of each of the following systems: IP PBXs, IP-enabled traditional PBXs, voice-enabled routers, IP phones, soft phones, VoIP quality management and troubleshooting systems, and IP Centrex.

IP phones got the highest overall rating for current use with 42% of the respondents indicating they use them today. At first glance this may seem a bit odd since that’s a higher percentage than either IP PBXs (29%) or IP-enabled traditional PBXs (30%). However, both of these product types can support IP phones, and the two PBX markets represent the highest overall installed base. In fact, the number of respondents indicating that they had IP PBXs, IP-enabled PBXs, or both essentially equaled the number indicating they had IP phones.

The next highest overall was the “legacy” VoIP category, voice-enabled routers, with 38% of respondents saying they use them today. Soft phones followed in a statistical dead heat with 36%. VoIP quality management and troubleshooting systems weighed in with 27%, not a bad showing at all for a relatively new market. The lowest by far was IP Centrex, with a 9% showing, although this is a bit higher than we might have guessed.

Next time we’ll dig a bit more deeply into these numbers.