Driven by businesses' move to cloud-based services and SIP, the global VoIP service market rose 5 percent year-over-year in 2015 to $73 billion. IHS said that while residential VoIP services from providers like Vonage represent a large part of VoIP services revenue, business services and a diverse supplier ecosystem are driving new growth.
A big portion of business VoIP growth was UC-as-a-Service (UCaaS) where revenue grew 6 percent over the prior year and seats were up 25 percent. IHS said that "the slower revenue growth is due to a highly competitive situation in North America that led to significant price cutting by many providers." Likewise SIP trunking posted another year of solid growth in 2015 due to activity in North America. One of the interesting trends that emerged during the past year was that hosted PBX and UC services are being pitched alongside SIP trunking as more multi-site businesses seek out hybrid solutions.
Despite the growth in business VoIP services, residential VoIP continued to remain strong, making up 62 percent of VoIP service revenue in 2015. As of the end of 2015, there were 230 million residential VoIP subscribers worldwide, up 3 percent from 2014. IHS has forecast strong worldwide growth is expected for the VoIP service market will reach $83 billion in 2020. Release
