Study: Hosted VoIP Driving Gains For UC Market

According to ABI, IP PBX vendors will ship a little over 35 million IP lines --- including native IP and hybrid lines -- during 2010. Overall VoIP revenue growth will come as competition between hosted VoIP providers and vendors that provide customer-premises equipment heats up, especially as both camps try to undercut the other on price and outduel each other on features. Slow economic recovery, especially in North America, is also pushing many customers toward hosted VoIP, ABi notes.

Hosted IP PBX services are expected to have grown 15.3 percent, accounting for $3.4 billion in revenue, by the end of 2010, according to the researcher.

"Hosted VoIP is a safe investment and offers flexibility for businesses in a slow, uncertain economic recovery," said Dan Shey, ABI practice director, in a statement. "Besides North America, Asia-Pacific will also be aggressive with hosted VoIP deployments."

Don't ignore the hosted model, ABI advises, because even if businesses are hesitant to adopt full-blown hosted communications, hybrid deployments are becoming more popular.

"Even large businesses that traditionally shied away from hosted services for mission-critical communications are deploying hybrid models, [and] experimenting with hosted services in smaller doses," said Subha Rama, ABI senior analyst.