Voice-over-Internet-Protocol (VoIP) is beginning to attract more consumers, due to the decline in price according to leading research company, International Data Corporation (IDC), who predict 27 million users will have subscribed by 2009, an increase of 24 million from 3 million who currently subscribe.
Though relatively small, analysts eMarketer reveal the VoIP market to be saturated with competitors, with IDC forecasting it to grow even more.
One of the major challenges for VoIP providers is making the service known to consumers. A survey from Harris Interactive found that just 9% of consumers familiar with VoIP currently use it.
The Harris survey also found that few consumers expect to become VoIP subscribers in the near term, with only 2% claiming they were ‘extremely likely’ to use VoIP in the next year, and 4% ‘very likely’ to use it. Over half of respondents said that they were ‘not very’ or ‘not at all’ likely to use VoIP.
Even among the respondents who were familiar with VoIP, only 14% described themselves as ‘very’ or ‘extremely’ familiar with it.
Commenting on the future of VoIP adoption, William Stofega, senior analyst in IDC’s VOIP Services Research program, describes what lies ahead for competing providers: “The market for VoIP services is still in the very early stages of development and carriers and equipment vendors need to plan for a marathon.”
eMarketer believes that, once major telecom carriers unveil their service offering and begin to compete with their rivals from the cable industry, consumer VoIP penetration will take off.
VoIP is predicted to penetrate nearly 20 million households worldwide by 2010, and although currently the uptake is slow, over the next five years it should reach about 25% of the high-speed internet access market, generating nearly $1 billion (see VoIP To Reach 20 Million Households By 2010).
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