An eMarketer report in 2008 predicted the number of VOIP subscribers to reach 196.3 million worldwide by 2012. It should be interesting to look at these figures with the benefit of hindsight. According to a report released by Point Topic earlier this year, we seem to have missed those numbers quite significantly. According to the report, the total number of VOIP subscribers by the end of 2012 stood at 151.5 million. This is how the numbers stack up when distributed geographically
| Region | Market Share |
|---|---|
| North America | 25.1% |
| America (others) | 4.5% |
| Asia-East | 35.7% |
| East Europe | 1.2% |
| Rest of Europe | 33% |
| Oceania | 0.5% |
So as you can see, VOIP is still strongly associated with the developed world and regions in Asia that have always been strong in the area of telecommunications. The report lists the following countries as the largest in the VOIP market.
| Country | Subscribers in millions (Q1 | 2013) |
|---|---|---|
| USA | 34.21 | |
| Japan | 30.99 | |
| France | 22.48 | |
| South Korea | 12.54 | |
| China | 11.85 | |
| Germany | 11.05 | |
| Brazil | 5.30 | |
| Netherlands | 4.86 | |
| Canada | 4.73 | |
| UK | 4.17 |
However, in terms of percent growth, emerging countries rule the roost. Lithuania, Puerto Rico, Poland, Ireland and Brazil form the top 5 in this list. According to Infonetics, VOIP is expected to be an $80 billion industry by 2017. This would mean a 7% compounded annual growth rate from 2012. This is expected to be primarily driven by businesses since residential connections are expected to only grow at 3% CAGR during this period. The report notes that SIP trunking is one of the popular growth areas have risen 23% from the second half of 2012 to the first half of 2013.
The Infonetics report further looks into the VOIP equipment providers who have largely benefitted from this growth. Here are the largest 5 providers in terms of global revenue share
| Rank | Provider |
|---|---|
| 1 | Huawei |
| 2 | Alcatel-Lucent |
| 3 | Genband |
| 4 | NSN |
| 5 | Acme Packet |
Despite the bullish growth projections, the market itself is reportedly under-served according to the New York based Eastern Management group. In their research, the firm projects the number of SIP phones sold to double between now and 2018. Going by these metrics, the firm notes that new entrants could easily take up to 10% market share.
Given these fast changing numbers, it would be interesting to revisit these numbers in a couple of years from now to see how things have changed.
