The total addressable market size of communications and collaboration (C&C) infrastructure in Singapore, in terms of enterprise spending opportunity, is set to increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.6% between 2020 and 2025, supported by growing demand for conferencing services, communication platforms, and enterprise social networking and collaboration tools across enterprises, says GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.

Samrat Volam, Technology Analyst at GlobalData, comments: “The widespread enterprise adoption of remote operations following the COVID-19 pandemic has bolstered the demand for C&C infrastructure during 2020. With most enterprises expected to continue with their flexible working arrangements over the next few years, growth prospects for C&C infrastructure will remain strong with the overall market size reaching US$2.1bn by the end of 2025.”

According to GlobalData Market Opportunity Forecasts to 2025: ICT in Singapore, among all C&C market segments, comprising hardware, software and services, the latter will represent the largest contributor to the overall market value through the forecast period.

Traditional C&C service propositions i.e., fixed voice and mobile voice services will see their enterprise spending decline at a CAGR of -7.9% and -4.2%, respectively, over the forecast period, owing to the widespread shift towards unified communications. On the other hand, mobile data, web and video conferencing, and managed IP telephony services will see healthy growth over the same period.

Communications and collaboration software segment, comprising communications platforms and enterprise social networking & collaboration platforms, represents the fastest growing market segment by value. A key factor driving rapid growth in this segment is the fact that most of the new platforms are cloud-based, making their deployment relatively cost effective. Also, majority of the large-scale enterprises in Singapore are already used to cloud implementations and therefore have been quick to embrace cloud-based C&C platforms for an agile communications infrastructure.

Mr Volam concludes: “While the large enterprise segment (1,001+ employees) will account for largest share of the total enterprise C&C spending opportunity in Singapore through the forecast period, the combined spending opportunity from micro (1-50 employees), small and medium (51-1,000 employees) enterprises will increase at a marginally faster CAGR of 6.7% over the forecast period. Government support in the form of Productivity Solutions Grant through Infocomm Media Development Authority and Enterprise Singapore will support SMEs in their adoption of IT solutions including C&C.”