Banerjee noted to Comms Business Magazine that the strongest performances across Europe came from Cisco and Aastra, “Total lines shipped during the quarter were 4.8 million, a year on year decline, however Cisco recorded a fantastic quarter and increased their share of pure IP telephony significantly. Nortel had success in all the market segments, especially in the SME sector whilst Alcatel suffered from low uptake in France. However OmniPCX Enterprise continued to show remarkable traction in the 100+ segment of the market in Europe.
Aastra emerged as the third largest player. It had a very aggressive quarter in what is termed as an attempt to reach last year’s target and more but Avaya’s shipments last quarter declined over its previous year’s performance raising concerns over direction. Other vendors such as ShoreTel and Swyx continue to growth at several times the market rate.”
Commenting on the analysis, Graeme Allan, country director for UK & Ireland, Alcatel enterprise activities said, "OmniPCX Enterprise sales in the UK continue to climb as a result of strong pull through from contact centre and collaboration solutions sales. The winning formula of a market leading IP/TDM hybrid solution and landscape-changing applications such as My Teamwork has aided the overall strong growth of this segment for Alcatel in the UK. Alcatel continues to enjoy its number one position in EMEA for enterprise telephony due to the unique combination of a full convergent portfolio along with its strong endorsement of a 100% indirect sales model."
In terms of overall percentage market share the league table looks like this according to Frost and Sullivan:
Alcatel 14.93%
Siemens 14.19%
Aastra 11.43%
Nortel 11.12%
Avaya 10.23%
Ericsson 9.64%
Cisco 7.20%
Philips-NEC 2.57%
Others 18.69%
Half Year Report:
Looking at the first half of 2006 Banerjee commented that there was “Concern over the future of large vendors and the growing success of hosted solutions lead to a decline in their performance compared to the same period in 2005.
Strong growth was exemplified by pure IP software vendors such as Cisco, ShoreTel and Swyx and speculations continued to play spoil sport for Siemens Enterprise after the parent made the business a wholly owned subsidiary.
Banerjee continued, “Nortel has managed to exert a strong push after identifying this sector as a ‘must keep’ and announced a partnership with Microsoft. Its BCM product line is a success story.”