From 2000 to the year 2004, Indian conferencing market has come a long way. From the early days of low-cost, vanilla audio conferencing, the market has moved ahead and diversified into newer offerings such as video and now Web conferencing catering to diverse segments. Web conferencing grew in the last two years and this has been primarily due to the fillip provided by the IT and ITeS industry. The total market for audio-video conferencing products and solutions during
2004–05 was Rs 43 crore.

Polycom continued to enjoy the leadership position with about 46 percent market share and total revenue of Rs 19.8 crore. European vendor Tandberg followed with 30.6 percent market share and a revenue of Rs 13.2 crore. Tandberg, by virtue of its high-end products, was able to garner some share from Polycom thanks to a big order from a Tamil Nadu government project, to connect courts across the state. The project worth Rs 6 crore was for connecting 80 locations and was the largest installations during FY 2004–05. In volume terms, total number of endpoint units sold during FY 2004–05 was 2200, which included desktop systems and group systems. Out of this, Polycom's share was about 50 percent. Tandberg closely followed with 40 percent of volume business. Revenue of other players such as Sony, Aethra, and Vcon could not cross the single-digit mark.

One major development of last year was the entry of the Italian conferencing giant Aethra Telecomunicazioni through a strategic alliance with Siemens's Information and Communication Networks-Enterprise Networks (ICN EN) division in August last year. Aethra plans to leverage Siemens' extensive nationwide sales and service network and hopes to service clients across the spectrum-from the entry level to advanced levels and at affordable prices.

Major Trends
One significant trend during the year was the ability of group video systems having the ability to share data and applications. Contrary to the popular perception, it was the government sector which remained ahead of the IT and ITeS companies in terms of deployment. New segments which played a key role in the growth included: telemedine, e-education, and tele-judiciary. Most of the orders from IT and ITeS companies were primarily part of the long-term deals spilling from the previous year.

A reasonable decline in the average price of desktop system as well as group system drove the market during the last year. Also, FY 2004–05 saw a dramatic improvement in connectivity owing to bandwidth availability on demand. Web conferencing also emerged as a third segment after audio and video conferencing. The emergence of this segment was seen by the traditional equipment vendors as an opportunity and not a threat. In fact, both Polycom and Tandberg launched products catering to Web conferencing segment as well.

Outlook
The market is highly under penetrated and there is a beginning realization by both corporates and government bodies about the utility of conferencing. With the government getting aggressive on e-governance, conferencing vendors are in for a windfall in the coming year. Web conferencing is expected to continue to grow rapidly due to a better user experience on account of availability of high-speed, broadband connectivity. With Aethra entering the market, Polycom and Tandberg can look forward to tough competition. Chinese vendors ZTE and Huawei are also all set to make a formal entry into the market and being price warriors, it is not good news for Polycom and Tandberg. In fact, Huwaei has already deployed its product ViewPoint 8000 in India.

Sudesh Prasad