Worldwide Unified Communications & Collaboration (UC&C) Market Delivers Strong Growth in the Second Quarter of 2020, According to IDC

Worldwide unified communications & collaboration (UC&C) revenue grew 25.1% year over year and 12.4% quarter over quarter to $11.5 billion in the second quarter of 2020 (2Q20), according to the latest International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Unified Communications & Collaboration QView.

Due to COVID-19, one thing that became apparent to many businesses and organizations during this period was the acute requirement to provision secure, scalable communications and collaboration solutions, tools, and applications to support a sudden, significant rise in the number of work-from-home (WFH) employees.

In the second quarter, the UC Collaboration market (including video conferencing software and cloud services) saw its revenues grow 46.9% year over year and 22.4% sequentially to $5.5 billion, with seats increasing 35.5% year over year. The Managed/Hosted Voice/UCaaS market (public and private cloud) also performed well, growing 20.4% year over year and 7.4% sequentially. Enterprise Videoconferencing Systems (video endpoints and infrastructure) rebounded from a weaker 1Q20 to grow 21.5% sequentially and 26.8% year over year. The IP Telephony/UC Systems (on-premises) market continued its downward trend amid the pandemic, declining 21.8% year over year in 2Q20.

"In the second quarter, organizations worldwide turned to video and collaboration solutions in particular to meet work-from-home employee requirements during an extraordinary time of crisis," said Rich Costello, senior research analyst, Unified Communications and Collaboration. "In the second half of 2020, and beyond, as some organizations begin to move from crisis phase to recovery phase, IDC expects that worldwide UC&C growth will be driven by customers across all business size segments (small, midsize and large) with interest especially in cloud-based solutions for voice, video and collaboration, mobile applications, and digital transformation projects."

From a geographic perspective, the UC&C market saw positive results across the globe in 2Q20. In North America (U.S. and Canada), UC&C revenue was up 15.9% sequentially and 27% year over year. The Asia/Pacific region, including Japan, saw revenue increase 12.6% quarter over quarter and 28.5% year over year. In Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), revenue was up 7.3% quarter over quarter and 19.9% year over year, while Latin America revenue increased 12.8% sequentially and 30.1% annually.

UC&C Company Highlights

• Microsoft's global UC&C revenue reached $4.0 billion, up 19.5% over 1Q20 and 49.1% year over year, representing 35.2% of the global UC&C market in 2Q20.
• Cisco's worldwide UC&C revenue in 2Q 2020 was $1.3 billion, up 11.7% quarter over quarter and 4.4% year over year. The company was second overall with 11.1% global UC&C market share for the quarter.
• Zoom's global UC&C revenue increased an exceptional 103.2% over 1Q20 and 363.3% year over year, totaling $648.6 million in 2Q20. Zoom's overall UC&C market share was 5.6% for the quarter.
• Avaya's global UC&C revenue was up 6.6% quarter over quarter and 7.1% year over year, despite seeing 30.3% decline in the IP Telephony/UC Systems segment. Avaya's UC Collaboration and UCaaS revenue more than offset this decline, increasing 37.6% quarter over quarter and 104.4% year over year.
• RingCentral's global UC&C revenue grew 5.1% sequentially and 33.7% year over year. The company's overall UC&C market share stood at 1.9% in 2Q20.

The 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 UC&C QView is provided in vendor revenue and unit/line/license/seat shipments.

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