On-Prem PBX & UC Size & Spending Forecast: 3Q2025

The Workplace Collaboration MetriCast 2025 market study shows continued decline for on-premises PBXs. For features beyond calling, businesses now typically bolt on collaboration services such as meetings and messaging from the cloud, while some continue to utilize legacy on-premises conferencing and collaboration applications. As with declining markets, the on-prem PBX business has collapsed to just a few vendors. In order of share, Cisco, Mitel, Avaya, Alcatel Lucent Enterprise (ALE), and NEC hold the bulk of the market. A few other vendors and open-source options comprise the remaining business. Of the five with on-prem PBXs, only Cisco and ALE have their own UCaaS offerings, placing them in a unique position of having the potential to keep those calling customers on their own platforms as they migrate to cloud. This report provides in-depth details on dedicated PBX spending, market shares, market size and forecast, and vendor selection, along with segmentation by size and global region. Highlights of the study include the following:

• While the market for PBXs has been declining since 2012, it is still a billion-dollar market globally. The global market size for PBXs was $1.9 billion in 2024, down 6.6% year-over-year (YoY). Metrigy forecasts the market to decline at a 6.8% CAGR from 2024 to 2029, ending at $1.3 billion by 2029, down slightly from our original forecast. The market decline is due to the transition to UCaaS and businesses holding onto PBX assets for 20+ years, with limited reason to upgrade core telephony solutions. Metrigy measures PBX manufacturing revenue only; it does not include revenue from management systems, service, or support in the forecast.
• PBXs are deployed worldwide, but 47.2% of revenue ($874.5 million) came from North America in 2024. Companies with over 10,000 employees represent the largest spend on PBXs in 2024, at $740.0 million, or 39.9% of the total.
• Based on 2024 PBX revenue, Cisco is the global market share leader at 47.2% share, followed by Avaya (18.6%), and Mitel (17.2%).
• 3Q25 PBX revenue declined 8.8% YoY from 3Q24. For the quarter, Cisco led global PBX revenue market share with 47.1% share, followed by Avaya (18.4%) and Mitel (17.2%). Cisco recorded 17.0% YoY decline its PBX revenue in the quarter, leading the quarterly drop.
• Among companies using on-prem PBXs, only 35.9% have no plans to replace their primary vendor. Cost and lack of analytics capabilities are the top reasons for those looking to make a change, followed by lack of AI capabilities and third-party application integrations.
• The criteria that businesses value most with a PBX is platform reliability, followed by security and technical features.