Cisco and Microsoft Face Competition in the Collaboration Market
Why Cisco's Stock Increased by 10% in February (Part 10 of 20)
Cisco overtook Microsoft in the collaboration market in 3Q14
In the previous part of this series, we discussed how Cisco (CSCO) managed to increase its presence in the collaboration market, which includes enterprise content management, enterprise voice, enterprise email, and enterprise social networks. We also discussed how Cisco and Microsoft (MSFT) continue to lead this market.
As the chart below shows, Cisco and Microsoft had almost equal market shares in calendar 1Q14 and 2Q14. However, Cisco managed to increase its share in 3Q14, while Microsoft’s share declined.
Competition is increasing for Microsoft and Cisco in the collaboration market
Microsoft’s share declined mainly because of the weakness in the enterprise email market. The email market is becoming competitive due to the increasing presence of Google’s (GOOG)(GOOGL) Gmail in enterprises. Recently, Amazon (AMZN) also announced its plans to enter into this market with a new email service, WorkMail .
Cisco is the leading player in the web and video conferencing applications market through its WebEx solution. However, recently, BlackBerry (BBRY) has become aggressive in this market. In November last year, BlackBerry launched BBM Meetings, a mobile app that allows voice and video conferences for groups of up to 25 people. This service is compatible with BlackBerry smartphones and also works on iOS, Android, and Microsoft Windows Phone smartphone operating systems. BlackBerry claims that BBM Meetings is more cost-effective than WebEx.
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