Description

This research study analyzes the current and future trends of the Asia-Pacific video conferencing endpoints and infrastructure market, service providers' performance, and market share. Despite difficult economic conditions, growing enterprise requirements create opportunities in the Asia-Pacific. The forecast period for this research service is from 2021 to 2027, and the base year is 2020.

In 2020, the total enterprise video conferencing endpoints and infrastructure revenue in the Asia Pacific market reached $864.4 million, representing a 4.5% annual growth. While the economic contractions led to delays in project rollouts and restricted the growth in most markets, the surge in demand in Greater China during the COVID-19 lockdowns partially offset the decline and helped boost Asia Pacific’s overall revenue growth.

Given the strict virus containment measures and government support in the form of fiscal policies and financial aid, many large enterprises in China, including foreign-based multinationals, invested in video conferencing to enable collaboration across distributed branches and business sites.

The Chinese government has proactively evaluated the benefits of telemedicine and distance education to get through the COVID-19 pandemic. Technology investment in these sectors is in the beginning phase but is anticipated to grow in the long term.

In 2020, Huawei, the market leader in China, continued its market domination with impressive sales growth that was further accelerated by the US-China trade wars. To enable remote work and enhance the quality of communications nationwide during the lockdowns, Huawei has tightened its business partnerships with the public sector, many telecom operators, and large enterprises and its comprehensive portfolio of devices, enterprise networking, and professional and managed services, beyond telecom infrastructure.

In China, there continue to be new infrastructure opportunities to connect various government agencies. This unexpected spike in demand in China led to video conferencing infrastructure market growth in 2020. However, going forward, as enterprise IT and telecom solution deployments increasingly shift from CAPEX to OPEX models in an effort to reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO), IT procurement decision makers will hesitate to invest in video conferencing infrastructure.

The COVID-19 crisis has changed organizations’ perspective about remote work and learning and the critical role video can play in enabling remote collaboration. Businesses and educational institutions are rapidly responded to challenges presented by travel restrictions and home-based learning. Various industries in the Asia Pacific region were forced into a mass experiment with remote work and online learning, especially in South Korea and Japan, where remote work was not a common practice prior to the pandemic.

The overall revenue from sales of video endpoints and infrastructure did not correlate closely with demand for video meetings in the shift to remote work. Considering the looming uncertainty with continuous lockdown, IT decision makers took a pragmatic approach of putting a hold on meeting room endpoints purchase. Also, intense competition from a low-cost as well as consumer grade alternatives to video conferencing endpoints impacted the market negatively.

Though the COVID-19 pandemic continues to hamper economic activities worldwide, impacting businesses and industries negatively, the investments in video conferencing across the region, including China adopting video conferencing solutions rapidly, are expected to be increased gradually.

Among the vendors, Huawei performed better than all other market participants due to its massive success in the Chinese market, which bounced back far quicker than the rest of the Asia Pacific region.

Frost & Sullivan expects to see participants grow strong in specific use cases and emerge from this crowded market. Post-pandemic market success pivots on user experience. Vendors that focus on providing tools that surpass user expectations and accelerate digital transformation will be the winners.