IDC today released the results from its Worldwide Enterprise Videoconferencing and Telepresence Qview, which showed 4Q12 videoconferencing equipment revenue declined 8.6% year over year, but increased 14.9% quarter over quarter. Total worldwide enterprise videoconferencing and telepresence equipment revenue was $739.8 million in 4Q12, with revenue for the full year 2012 reaching $2.64 billion. The $2.64 billion total in 2012 was down 2.6% from full-year 2011 total revenue ($2.71 billion), according to IDC.
From a market segment perspective, multi-codec immersive telepresence continued its decline with a 32.8% year-over-year drop for the full 2012. This was the second consecutive annual decrease for this high-end segment, off its high water mark in 2010. However, room-based videoconferencing (4.1%) and personal videoconferencing (5%) segments both experienced mid-single digit growth in 2012 on an annual basis.
On a regional basis, Asia/Pacific outperformed the other worldwide regions and grew 10.4% year over year in 4Q12. Latin America was close behind with an 8.8% year-over-year growth rate in 4Q12. Conversely, Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) decreased 5.9% and North America decreased 22.9% year over year in 4Q12.
"Several of the video vendors pointed to the difficult global macroeconomic situation, fiscal uncertainty, and cutbacks in spending in key areas such as the public sector, including government and education, as reasons for the challenging annual 2012 results," Rich Costello , Senior Analyst, Enterprise Communications Infrastructure, at IDC, said in a press release. "But most of the vendors enjoyed good fourth quarter results as interest in video continues to grow among organizations, especially those with good use-case requirements. IDC views this as perhaps a small step towards an enterprise video market rebound in 2013."
Key Vendor Updates:
· Cisco's 4Q12 results showed a 19.8% decline in revenue versus the record high 4Q11, but a 19% quarter-over-quarter increase. Cisco remains the market leader with 44.8% of the market in 4Q12, which is up slightly from the 43.3% share in 3Q12.
· Polycom's 4Q12 revenue increased 5.7% quarter over quarter, but was down 18.5% year over year. Polycom's market share stands at 23%, down from 25% in 3Q12, as the vendor introduced a range of new video products and services to the market in 2012.
· Huawei's 4Q12 revenue increased a healthy 34.8% quarter over quarter, as well as an impressive 119.7% year over year, as the vendor benefited from strong video growth in the Asia/Pacific and Latin America regions.
"Despite the overall weak 2012 performance in the worldwide enterprise videoconferencing market, we still see adoption being driven by interest in doing video integrations with vendor UC&C portfolios and business processes, as well as the increasing use of video among small workgroup, desktop, and mobile users," said Petr Jirovský, Senior Research Analyst, Worldwide Networking Trackers Research. "Video as a key component of collaboration continues to place high on the list of priorities for many organizations."
