Small Business Spending on Wireless Services to Overtake Wireline Voice in 2012

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz., August 18, 2011 - It has always been predicted that small business expenditures on wireless services would someday exceed that of wireline voice.  That "someday" will be in 2012 as wireless becomes the largest category of telecommunications spending for small businesses, according to new research from In-Stat (www.in-stat.com).  Wireline data spending and cloud computing services round out the four spending categories.

"Connectivity has become the life blood of businesses' efforts, but it is particularly crucial to small businesses as many operate without a brick-and-mortar presence to customers," says Greg Potter.  "One can already see the strength of wireless in 5-9 and 10-19 sub-segments.  It is the 20-99 sub-segment, however, that will maintain the dominance of wireline voice through the end of this year."

Additional data includes:

• Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) is set to grow 190% from 2010 to 2015.  Overall, cloud computing services are the largest growth engines for small business telecom spending.
  
• Traditional TDM services are set to decline 15% from 2010 to 2015, a loss of over $1 billion.
  
• Retail trade, along with the hospitality and food vertical will account for over $11.5 billion in spending in 2010.
  
• The 20-99 employee size portion of the small business segment accounts for over half of all spending in small businesses (5-99 employees).

Recent In-Stat research, Small Business Markets for Telecom Services: Wireline Voice, Wireline Data, Wireless, Cloud Computing, and VoIP in 20 Verticals (#IN1105071SBA), provides forecasts of US business telecom spending for the 2010-2015 period with detailed segmentation by product category, size of business, corporate liable spending, individual liable spending, and vertical market.

Detail is included for:

• Wireless Data (Access and Other, Messaging), Wireless Handsets, and Wireless Voice Services
• Local Services, Domestic Long Distance, International Long Distance, Toll-Free Services, Other Services
• Application-Based VoIP, Broadband IP Telephony, Hosted IP PBX, Premises-Based IP PBX, TDM Centrex, TDM PBX, and Traditional TDM
• Public Cloud Services: IaaS, PaaS, SaaS; Co-Located Services, and Dedicated Server Services
• ATM, Ethernet, Frame Relay, Cable, DSL, IP VPN, MPLS, T1/T3

Forecasts are also broken down further into the following vertical markets:

• Administrative and support services, waste management
• Arts and entertainment
• Construction
• Education
• Finance and insurance
• Forestry, fishing, and agricultural services
• Government
• Healthcare and social services
• Hospitality and food
• Information and communication
• Management of companies and enterprises
• Manufacturing
• Mining
• Other services
• Professional services
• Real estate
• Retail trade
• Transportation Utilities
• Wholesale trade

This research is part of In-Stat's Size of Business Analytics provides forecasts of US business telecom spending for the 2010-2015 period with detailed segmentation by product category, size of business, corporate liable spending, individual liable spending, and vertical market.

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