Web conferencing gaining prominence in Australia, but still lags behind audio calls

Australia is the biggest conferencing market in the Asia Pacific region, according to a report by research group Wainhouse. The organisation collected data on China, India, Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia and found out that the Australia is the largest market for conferencing and collaboration solutions. It accounts for a total revenue of $ 250.3 million, with audio conferencing responsible for a share of $ 192.6 million. Web conferencing was a distant second with a share of $ 53.6 million, though it is the fastest growing field, as per Wainhouse. Video conferencing lags behind at a market valuation of $ 4.1 million in Australia. The leading conferencing service providers (CSPs) in the market reduced the pricing of audio conferencing services in 2010. The costs of attended calls went down by 6 per cent, while the rates of unattended calls also lowered by 3 per cent. This decrease in price resulted in a year over year decrease in the revenues too. However, the demand for audio calls still persists in the country as Wainhouse registered an 18 per cent increase in unattended audio minutes in 2010, resulting in 15 per cent upswing in revenue. In fact, unattended audio calls accounted for more than 94 per cent of total volume of audio conferencing services, accounting for 1024.5 minutes as compared to just 62.4 minutes of attended audio calls. In terms of percentage, audio conferencing accounts for 77 per cent of the total market, with web and video conferencing following it at 21 per cent and 2 per cent, respectively. However, the future belongs to web conferences according to Wainhouse, as it suggested that online conferencing will grow at a cumulative rate of approximately 19 per cent in the coming 4 years. This will be in contrast to audio conferences, which will grow, albeit at a slower rate of just 6 per cent during the same time period. However, if only unattended calls are taken into account, there will be a growth of around 17 per cent, even though the prices for the same will continue to decrease in the market. This decrease in pricing will also be applicable on attended audio calls though Wainhouse projects that there will be a 0 per cent growth in its demand. Its revenue is also expected to decrease constantly at the rate of 9 per cent in the next four years. Likewise, video conferencing is also not expected to grow in Australia, as the research house expects the demand for video calls to remain constant or even decline by 2 per cent by 2015. Considering the demand for unattended audio calls and web conferences, the prominent domestic CSPs, like Arkadin Australia, have started offering unified communication suites. Such collaboration solutions allow users to access audio and web conferencing applications from the same browser-based platform. Such solutions allow users to make use of various tools to work closely with their geographically isolated counterparts conveniently.