NEEDHAM, Mass. – The worldwide unified communications and collaboration (UC&C) market is forecast to reach $69.1 billion in revenue in 2024, an increase of 7.5% compared to 2023, according to a new report from International Data Corporation (IDC). During the 2023-2028 forecast period, the UC&C market is expected to witness a slightly lower compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.7% to reach $85 billion by 2028.

"The UC&C market has matured after significant investments were made in the past few years by businesses to address the changed work environment," said Jitesh Gera, research manager, Unified Communications and Collaboration at IDC. "In addition, the crowded UC&C market has led many solutions toward commoditization. However, AI is now changing the game altogether, bringing a fresh wave of new and differentiated capabilities that are likely to draw more investments in the coming years as businesses vie for enhanced employee productivity and better customer engagement."

Looking across the key technology segments of the UC&C market, the two software segments — UC collaboration (meeting software without voice telephony subscriptions) and unified communications as a service (UCaaS) (meeting software including voice telephony subscriptions) — accounted for most of the worldwide market revenue (89% in 2023). Their share is expected to rise further as growth in the hardware segments (IP telephony and enterprise videoconferencing systems) turns negative over the forecast period. Meanwhile, the UC collaboration segment is forecast to outpace the overall market with a five-year CAGR of 7.6%.

Microsoft continued to lead the worldwide UC&C market with a 44.7% market share by revenue in Q1 2024. Zoom and Cisco followed distantly with a 6.4% and 5.5% market share respectively. The remainder of the market is largely fragmented with several smaller players focused mainly on specific industry verticals or small and medium businesses (SMBs) in their focus geographies.

Among the drivers of UC&C adoption is the continued introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities into UC&C solutions. This includes AI-enabled videoconferencing and telephony solutions that help improve productivity as well as capabilities that improve business outcomes across employees and customers. IDC also expects cloud-based UC&C deployments will increase over time, replacing on-premises deployments as security and data integrity continue to improve. And the integration of UC solutions with contact center platforms will continue as buyers look to simplify their technology stacks and reduce their administrative load to work with single unified providers of UC, CC, and CPaaS capabilities.

IDC defines unified communications and collaboration (UC&C) as a bundled, integrated UC/UCaaS and UC collaboration solution stack that may include an advanced telephony solution integrated with messaging (i.e., email, voice, and fax), instant messaging (IM) or chat, presence, and conferencing platforms for web conferencing, audioconferencing, and/or videoconferencing. These platforms also typically include the creation of teams/channels for access-based communications and knowledge sharing, plus tools such as digital whiteboards, screen sharing, live polls/surveys, questions and answers (Q&As), and meeting scheduling capabilities. In addition to the software-based platforms facilitating these communications, the UC&C market includes the primary hardware that enables these communications, including desktop IP phones, videoconferencing endpoints comprising integrated camera and microphone systems, and multipoint control units (MCUs) bridging multiple users and devices into a single network. These UC&C solutions can be delivered via on-premises infrastructure or on public/private cloud on an as-a-service basis.