[Techtaffy Newsdesk]

Results from the  IDC  Worldwide Enterprise Videoconferencing and Telepresence Qview showed continued challenging market conditions in the third quarter of 2012 (3Q12), with videoconferencing revenue declining 4.8% year over year even though it increased 7.1% quarter over quarter.

The enterprise videoconferencing and telepresence market is also showing significant differences in the performance of major geographies. The continued strong market results in Latin America and Asia/Pacific, which grew 13.7% and 9.7% year over year respectively, were not enough to fully offset the 11.5% year-over-year decline in North America and the 10.8% year-over-year decrease in Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) in 3Q12.

From a market segment perspective, multi-codec immersive telepresence continues to decline rapidly with a 35.8% year-over-year drop. Other videoconferencing components (gateways, firewalls, etc.) declined 26.8% year over year. On the other hand, the single-codec videoconferencing segment increased 0.4%, personal videoconferencing grew 8,7%, and video MCUs were up 5.0% year over year in 3Q12.

Rich Costello (Senior Analyst, Enterprise Communications Infrastructure): As expected, a down year for the overall enterprise videoconferencing and telepresence market continued in 3Q12. This is mostly due to uncertainty stemming from macroeconomic concerns, and a continuing decline in high-end immersive systems. We also feel that customers are considering more strategic approaches to deploying video technology and applications, leading to longer decision cycles.

Key Vendor Updates

• Cisco’s 3Q12 enterprise videoconferencing and telepresence revenue increased 17.9% sequentially over the relatively weak 2Q12, but was still down 14.7% on an annual basis. Cisco market share now stands at 43.3%, up from 39.3% in 2Q12 but down from 48.3% in 3Q11.
• Polycom’s revenue declined 11.8% quarter over quarter and 15.2% year over year in 3Q12, but it remains the clear number two vendor in the market with a 25.0% share.

“Despite the overall weak 3Q12 performance in the worldwide enterprise videoconferencing and telepresence market, we still see adoption being driven by video integrations with vendors’ UC and collaboration portfolios, and with 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, and we anticipate a return to positive market growth in 2013.”

[Image courtesy: Polycom]