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VoIP Market in Germany 2007
26/03/07
Traditional
telecom operators must act now to prevent low-cost Internet service
providers and other non-traditional telcos from dominating the
German Voice over IP (VoIP) market, according to research of the
German SME telecommunications market sponsored by BroadSoft.
Key Statistics
from the Survey:
64% of German
SMEs are interested in VoIP services
32% of SMEs
consider traditional German telcos as VoIP providers
Only 15% of
SMEs are aware of the advanced features through VoIP
The research,
conducted by Savatar Consulting, found parallels between the current
German market and the status of the US market in 2005, when
traditional operators subsequently lost their market leadership in
VoIP services to non-traditional operators. The research found that
currently, traditional operators lead the German VoIP market with 32
percent of SMEs regarding them as the main business VoIP provider,
compared with only 8 percent favouring non-traditional operators.
These results
are extremely similar to the US market's makeup 18 months ago. Since
then, however, Vonage, Skype and other VoIP-only competitors have
carried out aggressive VoIP marketing campaigns. Today the
non-traditional operators lead the US VoIP market with 23 percent
and the traditional operators trail at 10 percent.
"Over the past
18 months we've witnessed incumbent US operators be indecisive or
make a catalogue of missteps that have allowed non-traditional
operators like Vonage and Skype to wrestle away control of the
market," said John Macario, president of Savatar Consulting. "German
operators risk repeating exactly the same mistakes and losing their
dominance in the market. The key lesson to draw is that German SMEs
are interested in VoIP and if you do not pro-actively promote your
IP products to them, they will buy VoIP services from one of the
growing number of non-traditional voice providers instead."
The BroadSoft-commissioned
research found there is a substantial untapped market in Germany
with 70 percent of SMEs interested or very interested in VoIP.
Whereas in Europe overall, nearly 64 percent of SMEs had no or
little interest in VoIP services, according to Savatar.
Despite the
strong interest in Germany, the market remains largely uneducated
about the benefits of IP voice services with 84 percent of German
SMEs primarily viewing VoIP as a way to make inexpensive calls,
while only 15 percent primarily considering VoIP as a means to
acquire advanced voice features that can replace an expensive
on-site PBX. In the more mature US market, only 43 percent of SMEs
primarily view VoIP as a way to make cheap calls, while about 20
percent perceive VoIP as offering more advanced voice features, and
20 percent identify VoIP as way to more easily and economically
manage the enterprise network.
"There is a
natural reluctance for traditional telecom operators to promote VoIP
products because of a perception that VoIP leads to margin erosion.
This research demonstrates that it is more important than ever for
all operators - especially the larger brands - to proactively
educate the SME market on how VoIP services can offer significant
enterprise productivity improvements in today's highly mobile,
converged workplace," said Craig Decker, vice president of EMEA
Sales for BroadSoft.
"Many
incumbents see the value in VoIP solutions like those available
through BroadSoft's BroadWorks(r) platform," said Gerd Ternes,
regional vice president, central and eastern Europe for BroadSoft.
"In Germany, they need to heed the feedback in the Savatar study
from this important target market and aggressively extend their
brands into the VoIP space to fend off the competition."
Savatar
interviewed 410 European SMEs - in the UK, France, Germany and the
Netherlands - about their perceptions and experiences with business
VoIP. The research included quote requests for VoIP services from
European operators to assess the maturity of the sales process.
Savatar has also carried out identical research in the US market.
Nick Gibson, editor
©
Copyright Screen-Studio.com 2007
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