Thursday, December 20, 2012

Is there Such a Thing as Voip Marketplace Saturation?

By Saul Saresi


No matter what business you're in, if you haven't at least considered the benefits that Voice Over IP could bring to your company, you haven't been paying very close attention to the future of business communication - a future that offers drastically improved call quality and lower call costs as standard.

But due to the incredible advantages offered by this system, there are sectors of the Voip world which face the very real prospect of market saturation being reached in the near future - and its a problem that service providers are seriously concerned about.

Time for some stats to back up the facts - beginning with Voice Over IP subscriber numbers. In 2010 the number rose by over 12% to reach one hundred and fifty seven million. As well as this, residential provider numbers grew by almost 15% in 2011 to just under one hundred and eighty million.

The most users belong to the USA, Japan and France respectively, with the UK languishing in 10th place - thanks in no small part to the somewhat lacking broadband ability.

In France and Japan, the introduction of fibre based broadband services have been the main driver behind adoption, with over 93% of broadband subscribers in France also having a Voice Over IP service, a statistic which has resulted in that particular segment to suffer from market saturation.

But despite potential market saturation in France, there are still huge opportunities elsewhere, with China - the world's largest broadband market - only having one bundled Voice Over IP service for every 20 broadband subscriptions in 2010.

And if further re-assurances were needed just take a quick look at the number of Smartphones endlessly making their way onto the market, all ready and waiting to be equipped with the latest Voip subscriptions. That is if the fact that the subscriber rates tripling in 2011 is anything to go by...

And so there you have it. Some market sectors will, evidently, reach saturation point before others - but regardless of if and when that happens there will still be plenty left to go around. In the mean time, the only question that any business should be asking themselves is, do we have the best Voice Over IP service provider on the market? And if you've not yet considered that question, you need to step your game up.




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