The global enterprise videoconferencing market declined 21% in the first quarter of 2012 (1Q12) compared to the fourth quarter of 2011, according to finding from the International Data Corporation (IDC).
The findings revealed a noticeable deceleration in market growth in 1Q12 with videoconferencing revenue up at 14.4% year-over-year, much less than the 23-25% year-over-year growth range in the last three consecutive quarters.
The relative strength in the single-codec telepresence and the personal videoconferencing segments, which grew 28.5% and 52.6% year over year respectively, were offset by weakness in the multi-codec immersive telepresence and the "other" videoconferencing components segments that fell by 38.7% and 2.8%, respectively.
The first quarter of 2012 was the fifth consecutive quarter of year-over-year declines for the immersive telepresence segment, which the research firm marked as the continuing trend of video pushing down market into the enterprise.
IDC Enterprise Communications Infrastructure senior analyst Rich Costello said the high-end, immersive telepresence market has been taking a hit lately as lower-cost, HD-quality video solutions, along with a range of new video deployment options for customers, have emerged.
"We still expect overall positive video market growth for the next several years though, driven by the impact of video integrated with vendors’ unified communications and collaboration portfolios, and with increasing strength among small workgroup, desktop, and mobile collaboration users," he added.
Cisco continues as the market leader with 30.7% year-over-year growth and occupied 50.6% of the market share in 1Q12, up over its 44.3% share in 1Q11.
Vidyo outperformed with market leading 82% year-over-year growth followed by Lifesize (Logitech) with 2.3% growth as the third largest player in the market though Polycom’s revenue declined 8.9% with a market share at 26.3%, down from its 33.1% share in 1Q11.
IDC, however reveals, despite the 1Q12 performance that was somewhat below expectations, the enterprise videoconferencing and telepresence market remains one of the fastest growing networking technologies and continues to place high on the list of priorities for many CIOs.
