Report: Avaya keeps lead on Cisco in PBX shipments in second quarter

Avaya topped the overall PBX market for the third straight quarter, claiming about one quarter of worldwide revenue in the second quarter of 2011, according to new research.

Enterprise unified communications, voIP and TDM equipment quarterly market share, size and forecasts, August 2011 (Infonetics Research)

Infonetics Research said the company benefited from steady shipments and healthy average selling prices. Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO), which last week released earnings for the fourth quarter and full year that buoyed its stock price after a steady drift downward, followed Avaya in second and established a slight lead in overall line shipments.

"The top enterprise telephony vendors remain in a tight battle to gain new customers and hold onto existing ones as enterprises migrate to IP and unified communications solutions," said Diane Myers, directing analyst for VoIP and IMS at Infonetics. "For the third quarter in a row, Avaya came out on top in the overall PBX market."

Despite a small quarterly decline, global PBX/KTS phone system revenue was down 2.3 percent from the first quarter to $2.02 billion; the segment is up 3.9 percent from a year ago. That continues a trend of a slow but steady recovery on year-over-year basis. Among the vendors in the market, only Aastra, Mitel (Nasdaq: MITL) and ShoreTel (Nasdaq: SHOR) posted positive PBX revenue gains in the second quarter over the first quarter.

As has been the case for the past three quarters, the PBX market in Asia-Pacific avoided the turmoil and sequential ups and downs of other regions, recording a fourth straight quarter of sequential PBX revenue growth; growth was up 29 percent from a year ago.

North America and EMEA continue to battle adverse economic conditions that have hit the enterprise telephony segment, causing companies in both regions to be reluctant to add employees or upgrade equipment.

Myers also said unified communications revenue increased 2.3 percent sequentially in the quarter to $112.4 million. She attributed the gain to the strength of worldwide Microsoft UC solution deployments.

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