Asian suppliers step into telepresence

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA: According to Ovum, an analyst and consulting company, Asia-Pacific is one of the regions experiencing strong growth from managed telepresence services over the next five years.

“By 2014, the telepresence-based videoconferencing services market will be worth $450 million globally, and Asia-Pac could account for nearly 42 percent of that,” said David Molony, Principal Analyst at Ovum, based in London.

During 2008–09 we have seen vendors increasing their interest in the Asia-Pacific region, with Asian vendors also jumping on the video bandwagon. “This increased interest is due to the great potential in the Asian market, which not only boasts technology-savvy markets such as Japan and Korea but has also seen pronounced growth in global enterprise relationships with China”, adds Molony, author of a newly published report “Business video 2010-14: chasing revenues in managed telepresence”. Videoconferencing solutions such as telepresence could ensure that these relationships can grow without the need for travel.

Vendors are also moving into the Asia-Pacific region as the opportunity presents itself to share managed service charges as well as equipment sales revenues. This is a very attractive proposition and is not an option in other markets, where global telecoms operators are mainly responsible for the management of telepresence solutions.

Among developments in the Asia-Pacific this year from vendors, Polycom has launched a room rental service for telepresence in seven countries; Huawei has launched a telepresence solution to compete in its local market, where it partners with China Telecom to help distribute its equipment, and Tandberg has opened a T3 telepresence room in Hong Kong to encourage enterprises to experience telepresence.

Service providers like Tata Communications in India, Telstra in Australia and CPCnet in Hong Kong have launched managed telepresence in region.

Ovum forecasts that revenues from suite-based videoconferencing (including telepresence) are oustripping revenues for desktop videoconferencing in Asia-Pacific and will be worth 53 percent of total business videoconferencing revenues of $360 million in the region in 2012. Whereas in other regions like North America and Europe, price regression and competitive pressures will leave suites-based video at 14 percent and 28 percent of the market, respectively.