WiFi Phone Market Hits $102.5 Million; Will Double This Year

The worldwide WiFi VoIP phone market jumped 76% to reach $102.5 million in revenue this year, according to a report by Infonetics.

The market is projected to more than double in the next year, as enterprises continue to deploy VoIP. By 2009, the phone revenue should hit $1.9 billion. Roughly two-thirds of WiFi phone revenue came from single-mode WiFi VoIP handsets in 2005, and 1/3 from dual-mode handsets. By 2009, dual-mode handsets are predicted to make up threee-quarters of total revenue. The report also found that 52% of dual-mode WiFi cellular handset revenue came from Asia Pacific, 25% from North America, 21% from EMEA, and 2% from CALA.

"The enterprise telephony market is undergoing a transition from circuit-based to packet switching, because organizations have extensive data networks that can potentially be used for telephony, eliminating the need for separate voice and data networks," analyst Richard Webb said in a statement.