The global corded PBX market (excluding Micro PBX products) continued to deteriorate in 2009, reports MZA. The analyst notes an overall 22% volume decline, which eased back to 10% during Q4. According to MZA's latest report, the worst performance was recorded in Q1 2009 when volumes dropped by 30%.

IP desktop deployments continued to gain share accounting for 30% of total extensions in Q4 2009 and 29% for 2009 as a whole. MZA says this reflects the fact that hybrid solutions remain significant in the SME segment and retain popularity with larger enterprises, which have the need to maintain a mix of both analogue/digital and IP desktop extensions.

Overall in 2009, the market worst affected was Eastern Europe, where annual volumes declined more than 50% compared to 2008. Latin America and Middle East and Africa recorded the next most significant declines, at 25% and 21% compared with full year 2008. North America witnessed significant improvements in both Q3 and Q4 2009 compared with full year volumes recording a fall of 20% compared to 2008. Western Europe and APAC regions recorded declines of 18% and 16% respectively compared with full year 2008.

Within Europe, there were significant differences in terms of market decline, with countries including France and the Benelux region recording significantly lower declines than the other countries. Within Europe the Eastern European markets all recorded declines of more than 35% when compared with 2008. In Western Europe Denmark, Norway, Ireland, Greece and Spain were particularly badly affected by the economic turmoil.

Cisco continued to lead the Global market in Q4 2009, as it did in the preceding three quarters and took the number one position for 2009 as a whole with a share of 12% of extensions shipped. Panasonic and NEC followed Cisco to take number two and three positions respectively with 11% share for the full year 2009. However, Panasonic retained its global number one position for deployments under 100 users. The three leading vendors for 2009 were followed by Avaya, Siemens, Alcatel-Lucent, Nortel, Aastra and Mitel.

There are significant variances in competitive dynamics between the different world regions and also countries within regions. In North America, Cisco took number one position in 2009, followed by Avaya and Nortel. In Latin America, Siemens gained the top spot followed by Intelbras and Panasonic. In Asia Pacific the situation is diverse, but the Japanese market's significance within the APAC region influences strongly. In 2009 NEC took first place position in APAC, followed by Panasonic, Samsung, Fujitsu and Cisco. Alcatel-Lucent was crowned king vendor in 2009 within EMEA, with Aastra at number two, closely followed in a tight pack by Siemens, Panasonic, Cisco and Siemens.