Wednesday 26 December 2012

Is there Such a Thing as Voip Marketplace Saturation?

By Saul Saresi


Voip has quickly proven itself to be not just a viable option for business and residential communications, but also as an incredible leap forward into a future of communication where high quality audio and video transfer, substantially reduced call rates and incredible flexibility come 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 the case of France and Japan in particular, the main driver behind the rise in Voice Over IP coverage has been the introduction of fibre based broadband services. In France in particular nearly 95% of subscribers also have a Voice Over IP service.

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.

As well as this, mobile Voip usage is also growing at an incredible rate thanks to the ever increasing numbers of Smartphones on the market offering Voip services. In 2011 alone, active mobile Voip subscriber rates tripled to over 29 million from just 9 million in 2010.

So market saturation is a very real and very imminent issue - but it surely isnt one that will be causing any sectors of the Voice Over IP service providers sleepless nights - unless they happen to be in France or Japan. The truth is that eventually all businesses will come to rely on Voip, but the reality is that there's still a whole world of opportunity out there, and there will be for many years to come yet.




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