Market Research

Davidson Consulting has already published scores of
fax-related reports.  These are the most recent:

FoIP Server Markets, 2007-2013:   Davidson Consulting has a new report on the market for FoIP servers that predicts the market will grow rather rapidly during the five-year forecast period, despite an economy mired in recession. FoIP servers will grow at an 19.6% compound annual growth rate (CAGR). The FoIP server software category will also grow at an 19.6% CAGR from $51 million in 2007 to $125 million in 2012 and the FoIP hardware category will grow at a 19.1% CAGR from $9.2 million in 2007 to $22 million in 2012.

Boardless FoIP servers will grow as fast as boarded FoIP servers as they will both have a CAGR of 19.8%. The only reason that boarded FoIP servers will grow as fast as boardless solutions is that the production fax market will grow and will take advantage of boarded solutions more than boardless. Otherwise, boardless solutions would grow faster than boarded.

The FoIP server market will be driven to a great extent by sales relating to MFPs, as businesses move to add fax server capabilities to their systems to automate processes, comply with regulations, and to conserve paper and energy for environmental reasons. This trend will impact the FoIP server business far more than the conventional fax server business, largely because vendors mostly have MFP solutions that are tied to using FoIP. Open Text, Sagem Communications, Biscom, MESSAGEmanager and FaxCore will all be selling FoIP solutions for users with MFPs. The market for FoIP servers with MFPs will grow from $38 million in 2007 to $69 million in 2012, a CAGR of 12.7.

All in all, the FoIP markets will grow impressively despite the global macroeconomic challenges.

The report is available from Davidson Consulting for $3,500 and is payable by check with a purchase order or by Visa, MasterCard or Amex. Davidson Consulting can be reached at 269-651-3157 or by email at peter@davidsonconsulting.biz.

Fax Messaging Markets, 2008-2013:   This report covers internet faxing, broadcast faxing, and production faxing as outsource services. The report covers market growth in revenues and also shows Internet fax subscribers. Internet fax is covered in terms of both enterprise and individual market segments. The report also delves into key issues including patent law, for which the situation has changed radically and is in flux. j2 continues to lead the industry and dominates the North American portion of the Internet fax market, holding an approximately one-fourth share of the individual and enterprise markets combined. The report finds that the fax services industry will experience growth rates that have diminished, due primarily to the economic downturn. The industry is expected to return to higher growth rates at the end of the forecast period, although not as high as the 25% growth rates it had earlier in the 2000s. The overall fax service industry will increase from $890 million in 2008 to $1.575 billion in 2013, a 12.1% compound annual growth rate (CAGR). Published in July, 2009. The price of the report is $3,500.
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Computer-Based Fax Markets, 2009-2014:  Davidson Consulting has published its latest market research report on computer-based fax. The report predicts that the market will grow from $345 million in 2009 to $700 million in 2014, a 15.2 CAGR (compound annual growth rate). This fast growth will be driven by the rise of fax over Internet protocol (FoIP) servers, the emergence of production fax as a key market segment, businesses connecting multifunction peripherals (MFPs) to fax servers, and the rise of unified communications as a key component of the desktop fax phenomenon.

Software-based revenues will lead hardware and maintenance revenues with a 19.1% CAGR. The FoIP market will grow very fast, at a 34.5 CAGR while conventional fax servers will decline at a -7.4% CAGR through 2014. Production fax will grow at only a 13.8% CAGR, but FoIPbased production fax will grow at a 32% CAGR.

For the fax server software itself, the factors that vendors need to watch are led by:

• fax over IP servers, which will be driven by the virtualization of servers, by the fax-enabling of Sharepoint applications, and because FoIP saves businesses money during installation and operation.
• production fax, which grew by at an astounding rate of 57.5% rate during the forecast period from an adjusted $69 million in 2008 to $110 million in 2009, and will grow by a 13.8% CAGR to $220 million by 2014.
• multifunction peripherals (MFPs), where support by fax servers will drive the third most growth in the market, and which will account for 32% of fax server revenues by the end of the forecast period.
• unified messaging, where the rate at which fax is sold with UM systems will nearly double during the forecast period, from 24.2% in 2009 to 42.5% in 2014. By the end of the decade, 70% of the total fax server market will be accounted for by desktop faxing (of which 42.5% will be for unified messaging), whereas 30% will be from production fax. Still, in terms of pages sent, production fax will send more than desktop fax throughout the forecast period.

Open Text, which acquired Captaris in late 2008, was the overall fax server leader in 2009, followed closely by Sagemcom. Nonetheless, Open Text sells the RightFax brand which is the leading brand across the globe, while Sagemcom sells a large portion of its fax servers in France and Europe and many of them to MFP users who own Sagemcom MFPs. Also, Open Text, which had the Captaris acquisition to wrestle with last year, now is moving beyond that and has budgeted to increase its developer staff by 50% while it also shores up its customer service and moves to quiet rumblings within its reseller community. So, suppliers who were licking their chops at Open Text’s acquisition-related weakness and the likelihood that it would continue to cede market share, will face a different foe in the marketplace going forward.

The 86-page report also profiles 45 fax server vendors and 6 fax board vendors and provides market shares for fax servers, IP fax servers, production fax, regional fax servers, fax boards, fax boards in the US and Europe, and regional fax servers. The report also provides forecasts for 12 different aspects of the computer-based fax industry.

The report is available from Davidson Consulting for $3,500 and is payable by check with a purchase order or by Visa, MasterCard or Amex. Davidson Consulting can be reached at 269- 651-3157 or by emailing to peter@davidsonconsulting.biz.


Fax Machines -- 2001-2006: This report covers the worldwide market for fax machines and fax-based multifunctionals.   Machines are forecast for every major country and all continents by laser, ink-jet, thermal transfer and thermal units, and market shares for each country and distribution by country.  There are also worldwide forecasts for 33.6 Kbs. machines, for multifunctional versus standalone products and for Internet fax machines.  Published in June, 2002.