There were 10.3 million VoIP subscribers around the world at the beginning of 2005, and 18.7 million by the year’s end. This marks 83% growth for the year, according to Point-Topic, a UK-based company specializing in broadband communication services information.
According to the company, new research shows that 4.7 million people worldwide paid for PC-to-phone calls in 2005. (This is based on an assumption using Skype’s Q4 2005 revenue.) When this figure is combined with the number of people who used retail VoIP services (phone-to-phone) the total is close to 24 million, which is a drastic increase from the 14.4 million total from the year before.
Japan, France, and the U.S. still have the most subscribers, while Germany, the Netherlands, and Norway saw big growth by the end of 2005.
“Many markets, especially in the USA and Europe, should see significant growth in VoIP during 2006,” the report said.
Despite Japan’s huge VoIP market, the Asia Pacific region saw the slowest growth in subscribers during 2005. This seems to indicate some saturation, at least in the Japanese market.
Asia’s growth numbers also suffer partly due to government restrictions in China which have required VoIP operators to remain in trial phases, “although some observers think that PC-to-PC and PC-to-phone calling has begun to dent Chinese fixed line revenues,” according to the report.
The report also pointed out that although VoIP figures more than doubled in the U.S. and Canada through 2005, the acronyms “VoIP” and “IP” are hardly mentioned in America. This is because VoIP growth has been spearheaded by cable companies, which market VoIP services as “digital telephone” services.
France is the strongest player in Europe, with about 2.8 million subscribers by the end of 2005, which does not include Skype users.
Source:
http://www.point-topic.com/content/dslanalysis/BBAVoipana060816.htm
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