Two-third of employees in Asia Pacific (66%) now use videoconferencing at least once a week, compared with 53% in EMEA and 49% in the US, a new survey reveals.
Conducted by Redshift Research and commissioned by Polycom, the “Global View: Business Video Conferencing Usage and Trends” survey polled more than 1,200 worldwide business decision makers.
Survey results also indicate that more respondents in Asia Pacific (70%) than in other regions of the world—55% in EMEA and 59% in the US— said videoconferencing is one of their preferred methods of communication at work.
In addition, employees in Asia Pacific (59%) expect to prefer videoconferencing to email (58%) as their top method of communication at work in three years’ time, indicating a continued shift in the way the region uses business communication technologies.
While the survey finds that video is becoming more pervasive in businesses across the globe, the uptake of the technology across some industries and business processes is greater in Asia Pacific.
According to survey results, a higher proportion of international office meetings are conducted via video conferencing in the region across the enterprise, manufacturing, and logistics sector. The same holds true for business processes-related meetings in the region such as product development and supply chain management.
The study also finds that in Asia Pacific, communications between colleagues in different countries is ranked as the most important use of video conferencing (65%).
Connecting to video meetings via laptop/desktop is the most popular method of videoconferencing in APAC (80%), but mobile is growing--being used by 44% of respondents.
Those using videoconferencing today say they expect more video conferences to take place on mobile devices (62%) than in conference rooms (59%) by 2016.
The report also reveals that etiquette is very important: 94% of employees in Asia Pacific using videoconferencing think organizations should establish etiquette rules for video meetings. For example, a mobile phone going off during a meeting is regarded as the biggest possible distraction during a video conference in the region, the survey report says.