The unified communications (UC) on-premise infrastructure market in Southeast Asia slowed down in the first half of 2014, but still managed 6.4% year-on-year growth, according to IDC Asia-Pacific.
IDC said the market slowdown was due to the political and economic road bumps in Indonesia and Thailand, rising tensions in the South China Sea region, a brutal run of natural disasters that hit Philippines last year and slowdown of buyer sentiments in Malaysia within the early post-election period.
In spite of the political and economic instabilities, the region still outperforms other geographic regions such as Australia, New Zealand and China, the company said.
IDC expects the market to grow to $652.8 million in 2018, at a five-year CAGR of 8.6% based on factory or vendor revenues.
Singapore continues to be the largest market with $57.1 million, followed by Malaysia with $44.6 million, the Philippines with $40.2 million, Indonesia with $37.4 million, Thailand with $32.3 million and Vietnam with $12.5 million.
"Adoption for UC managed services and cloud-based UC will continue to be the strongest in Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand, co-existing with the continuous growth of on-premise infrastructure market as a hybrid deployment model, moving UC up in IT agenda to a more encouraging commonplace of adoption," said Tan Hwee Xian, market analyst at IDC's Asia-Pacific Communications Group.
The market is expected to continue to flourish over the forecast period and the market growth is expected to be less stellar YoY, because of managed converged and UC services and cloud-based UC models which have grown significantly in the recent years.
IDC believes that investments in Southeast Asian will keep apace along with the proliferation of future workplace technology and mega network infrastructure upgrade cycle, notably migration from time-division multiplexing (TDM) or key systems to Internet Protocol Private Brach Exchange (IP PBX) is in full swing in most aforementioned countries.
In terms of verticals, finance, manufacturing, services and telecommunications remain as sweet spots for the market where public sector has plummeted 34% YoY.