IDC: Worldwide Unified Communications & Collaboration Sees Major Growth

The worldwide unified communications & collaboration (UC&C) 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 IDC, the Framingham, Massachusetts-based market researcher.

As some organizations 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.

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 organizations 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,” said 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.”

The IDC Worldwide Quarterly Unified Communications & Collaboration Qview provides total market size and vendor market share data in an easy-to-use Excel pivot table format that includes IP Telephony/UC Systems (IP Phones, IP PBX/UC Systems), Enterprise Videoconferencing Systems (Videoconferencing Room Endpoints, Huddle Room Endpoints, Videoconferencing Infrastructure), UC Collaboration, and Managed/Hosted Voice/UCaas (Hosted Voice/Public Cloud UCaaS, Managed Voice/Private Cloud UCaaS). Measurement for the Worldwide Quarterly UC&C QView is provided in vendor revenue and unit/line/license/seat shipments.

Channel Impact^®
Partners who invested heavily in this space in the midst of the pandemic have already been rewarded and are likely to see continued rewards into 2021.