In an economic time defined by minimal job growth and business climate uncertainty, there has been more contraction than expansion in business communications spending. Although that remains a predominant forecast there are specific areas of business spending that will buck that trend. Businesses from the SOHO to the Enterprise are planning on increasing their applications-based VoIP spending by nearly 60% over the next five years, says In-Stat.

Additional data includes:

• Overall VoIP spending is set to increase 52% from 2010 to 2014
• The SOHO market will see the largest decline in overall wireline voice spending declining 6% from 2010 to 2014.
• The largest growth in VoIP spending is coming from the professional services as well as the healthcare and social services vertical markets.

Overall wireline voice spending is decreasing by 8% from 2010 to 2014 in the mining vertical and 5% in the retail trade vertical.

The In-Stat research, US Business Spending by Size of Business and Vertical, 2009–2014: Business IP Communications (#1004793ISFS) provides forecasts of US Business IP Communications spending for the 2009–2014 period with detailed segmentation by product category, size of business, and vertical market. Detail is included for application-based VoIP, broadband IP telephony, hosted IP PBX, premises-based IP PBX, TDM Centrex, TDM PBX, and traditional TDM.

Forecasts are broken into the following size-of-business segments and sub-segments:

• SOHO business (1 to 4 employees)
• Small business (5 to 9 employees, 10 to 19 employees, and 20 to 99 employees)
• Mid-sized business (100 to 499 employees and 500 to 999 employees)
• Enterprise (1,000 to 4,999 employees, 5,000 to 9,999 employees, and 10,000 or more employees)
• Forecasts are also broken down further into the following vertical markets:
• Administrative and support services, waste management
• Arts and entertainment
• Construction
• Education
• Finance and insurance
• Forestry, fishing, and agricultural services
• Government
• Healthcare and social services
• Hospitality and food
• Information and communication
• Management of companies and enterprises
• Manufacturing
• Mining
• Other services
• Professional services
• Real estate
• Retail trade
• Transportation
• Utilities
• Wholesale trade