IDC: UC&C market sees growth in 3Q20

The worldwide unified communications - collaboration market grew 26.7% year over year and 6.6% quarter over quarter to $12.2 billion in the third quarter of 2020 (3Q20), according to new research from IDC.

As some organisations moved from crisis phase to recovery phase with regard to the pandemic, it was anticipated that worldwide UC-C growth would be driven by customers across all business size segments with interest especially in cloud-based solutions for voice, video, messaging, and collaboration for driving initiatives such as digital transformation projects and workplaces of the future. The increased revenue and shipment numbers within these segments for 3Q20 seem to bear that out, the analyst firm says.

Specifically, the UC Collaboration market (including video conferencing software and cloud services) increased 46.7% year over year and 5.3% over 2Q20 to reach almost $5.8 billion in revenue, with seats increasing 37.8% annually.

Additionally, the Hosted Voice/UC public cloud UCaaS market also did well and grew 23.3% year over year and 8.3% sequentially in 3Q 2020 to reach almost $4.3 billion in revenue.

In Enterprise Videoconferencing Systems (video endpoints and infrastructure), traditional room-based video systems declined both 2.3% year over year and 6.9% sequentially, but smaller huddle room video endpoints and video infrastructure equipment both experienced positive growth in the quarter (72.5% year over year and 16.8% over 2Q20) and (39.6% year over year and 21.6%% quarter over quarter), respectively. Revenue for IP Phones declined both 32.9% compared to 3Q19 and 11% sequentially.

"In 2020, COVID-19 caused many businesses and organisations to re-think their plans for leveraging digital technologies and accelerated interest in and adoption of solutions such as collaboration, videoconferencing, messaging, and UC as a service (UCaaS), among others," says Rich Costello, senior research analyst, Unified Communications and Collaboration.

"In 2021, we expect the positive growth numbers across these key UC-C segments to continue, albeit at slightly more modest rates."

From a geographic perspective, the UC-C market again saw positive results across the globe in 3Q20. In North America (U.S. and Canada), UC-C revenue was up 6.3% sequentially and 27.7% over 3Q19. Revenue in Asia/Pacific (including Japan) (APJ) was up 7.1% over 2Q20 and 27.7% year over year. EMEA revenue grew 6.6% sequentially and 24.2% annually, while Latin America revenue increased 7.2% quarter over quarter and 30.1% year over year.

UC-C Vendor Highlights

Microsoft's total worldwide UC-C revenue was almost $4.3 billion, growing 5.9% sequentially and 45.3% annually in 3Q20, representing a 35.1% share of the UC-C market for the quarter.

Cisco's total worldwide UC-C revenue in 3Q20 was almost $1.3 billion, up 1.7% over 2Q20 but down 3.8% year over year with a 10.6% share of the UC-C market for the quarter.

Zoom's total worldwide UC-C revenue increased 17.1% quarter over quarter and 375.1% year over year to almost $760 million in 3Q20. Zoom's global UC-C market share was 6.2% for the quarter.

Avaya's total worldwide UC-C revenue was up 14.2% over 2Q20 and 22.2% annually to $331.3 million in 3Q20, capturing a 2.7% share of the UC-C market for the quarter.

RingCentral's total worldwide UC-C revenue grew 8.1% sequentially and 32.7% year over year to almost $231 million in the quarter, representing a 1.9% share of the UC-C market in 3Q20.