European Peer-to-Peer Telephony Markets

Research Overview

This Frost & Sullivan research service titled European Peer-to-Peer Telephony Markets provides an analysis of the P2P telephony products and services markets, with a special emphasis on the enterprise segment. The study includes an overview of key market drivers, restraints and market forecasts for P2P-enabled desk phones.

Market Overview

P2P Technology Brings Next-generation Telephony Capabilities to Small Enterprises

In the last couple of years, suppliers in the European telephony markets have witnessed several changes. Technology transformation has significantly depreciated the value of traditional strengths and exposed the weaknesses of some of the major market participants. Given the price pressure, capital expenditure (CAPEX) limitations and intensive competition, there was a need for suppliers to either develop sustainable competitive differentiators or consolidate. In view of this, peer-to-peer (P2P) technology offers to create differentiation, more significantly in the context of new market creation rather than product innovation. One of the most successful ventures of the P2P technology is Skype, a hybrid P2P-based VoIP service. The success of Skype has created much-needed awareness on the potential of P2P technology and the power of file sharing.

In Europe, the enterprise P2P telephony market is in the adoption stage, while the consumer space is quite mature. However, both these segments are enjoying high growth rates. The runaway success of P2P voice systems has created several opportunities for P2P technology. "The availability of large system capabilities at the price of small systems is an adequate incentive to gain interest from small enterprise stakeholders," notes the analyst of this research service. "The sub-20 user segment of the enterprise communication market is by far the largest in terms of number of businesses." This segment has fallen far behind in the race for the use of latest technologies and thus, a huge opportunity exists, untapped by the larger market participants until recently.

Partnerships with Service Providers Crucial for Growth

Despite the huge market size and scope, the markets are highly dispersed, making the cost of developing channel presence prohibitive. In addition, the lack of a common buying behaviour creates high reliance on channel effectiveness to generate business. "Far from large and small cities, a huge proportion of businesses are set up in areas that may not necessarily have electronics accessories stores," explains the analyst. "Thus, supporting such businesses involves high costs."

P2P telephony vendors will have to contend with stiff competition from service providers, which provide hosted call management solutions for a monthly fee. Partnerships across the whole distribution chain between equipment manufacturers, resellers and service providers will be a critical success factor for P2P telephony vendors. As small businesses are highly risk-averse with a very limited CAPEX budget, they have not chosen hosting partners yet. With the adoption of IP in the mainstream, hosted service providers are gaining traction. Hence, vendors should partner with hosted service providers, as they can become an effective channel to promote their products.