14 March 2011

According to a promotion by a UK-based provider, IP Centrex accounts for about 5% of the UK PBX market. Estimates from a variety of sources put the total number of seats at around 600,000 users, which puts the total market somewhere around 12 million. We think that's an underestimate, particularly when the entire SME market is taken into account: UK figures from BER suggest a total of 13.6 million workers in SMEs, with over 25 million employed in the economy as a whole. Clearly, IP and Mobile Centrex have a long way to go to attain significant penetration, but on the other hand, there's enormous potential to do so.

And, the point is that other markets have similar potential. While IP Centrex will never entirely replace traditional PBX deployments, there is a significant potential for growth, particularly if the vision of providers encompasses all areas of the market - from corporates to the vast, untapped domain of the SME.