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New research by AMI-Partners predicted that the networking market will reach $1.6 billion in 2009. According to the company, the falling demand in markets such as Australia, Japan and Korea have not changed the spending patterns of the SMB players on networking.

 

One of the major reasons for this growth will be insistence of SMBs to cut travel costs of their employees as much as possible. Software-based VoIP and conferencing solutions have emerged as attractive alternatives to traveling and therein hides the secret of the success of APAC SMB networking market, AMI-Partners said.

 

The report said that the developed APAC SMB networking market is expected to grow 1.7 percent over 2008. Fueling the increase will be continued spending on network upgrades and migration to all-IP platforms, coupled with the desire for low latency, no hardware redundancy, operating systems that maximize uptime, and high speed to recovery, according to the report.

 

“Mobility has taken off over the last couple of years," said Gina Luk, Asia-Pacific telecommunications and networking research manager at AMI-Partners, in a statement. "This is occurring as SMB employees in the developed APAC region are traveling more and farther. Korea and Australia SMBs have a greater propensity for telecommuting, while Japan and Australia SMBs tend to be more mobile because of travel. This is evident even among firms across all employee segments.”

 

Internet service providers in Australia, Japan and Korea have launched low-cost VoDSL or VoCable offerings as lower costs are increasingly becoming appealing for SMBs taking up small VoIP and wireless-enabled VoIP routers. To increase their networking business and multiplatform usage growth, networking equipment vendors will then need to accelerate emphasis on value-added features, the report said.

 

Recently, the company announced the availability of its latest market research effort titled, “2009 Marketing Telecommunications Products and Services to SMBs in China: Market Opportunity, Competitive Environment, End-User Needs and Buying Behavior,” and said its main finding is that there significant scope for growth in both the wired and wireless telecommunications for the SMB market segments in China.