Industry analysis of instant messaging

According to the latest report, the number of end users in China's enterprise instant messaging market reached 22.36 million in 2008, a year-on-year increase of 23.3% compared with 18.13 million in 2007. Relevant experts pointed out that due to the impact of the global financial crisis, the growth rate of China's corporate instant messaging market has slowed down, but the market's potential demand has not yet been fully released. Once the economy picks up, the market will continue its previous rapid growth trend.

In the enterprise instant messaging market, products such as Anychat, Tencent RTX, Microsoft LCS (formerly OCS), and IBM Sametime occupy the majority of the market share. Among them, Tencent has accumulated more than 100,000 enterprise users in 2008 through years of hard work, and the number of users is close to 6 million. However, due to Tencent's support for RTX has weakened in recent years, its market share has declined. IBM is one of the earliest service providers involved in the field of enterprise instant messaging globally. Most domestic multinational companies and large groups are using its products. Microsoft LCS also made certain progress in the market in 2008, providing solutions for a variety of industries. plan. When the enterprise instant messaging market had just revealed its huge development potential, the global financial crisis poured cold water on this emerging market. Affected by capital, many potential demands cannot be effectively released, so the Chinese enterprise instant messaging market has fallen into a slow development situation. Nonetheless, the market is far from mature and is still in the introduction stage. Large manufacturers maintain a wait-and-see attitude, while small manufacturers are unable to support the development of the entire market. Midstream manufacturers are more active and have become the mainstay in maintaining market growth. Looking at the long-term development of the market, the average annual growth rate of China's corporate instant messaging market in the past two years is close to 20%, which is still a period of rapid development. The activity of the corporate instant messaging market will gradually increase as the impact of the financial crisis weakens.

The potential of the market needs to be reflected by sufficient user demand. Judging from the needs of enterprise users, the demand for enterprise instant messaging in 2009 has further increased compared with 2008. In order to reduce enterprise communication operating costs and improve business efficiency, China's large and medium-sized enterprises have paid more attention to the enterprise instant messaging market. The top 500 companies in the country have 80% of enterprises allow instant messaging software to become another communication method after phone calls and emails. Some enterprises have purchased professional enterprise-level instant messaging solutions, and enterprises have become important carriers of instant messaging tools. While this part of demand was amplified by the financial crisis, it was also suppressed. Therefore, once the economic order returns to normal, this part of demand will explode with huge potential. As a professional instant messaging service, enterprise instant messaging must reflect obvious differences from personal instant messaging products. According to the needs of enterprise users, enterprise instant messaging products take efficiency, stability and security as the focus of product development.

Whether an enterprise instant messaging software provider can provide a complete instant messaging server and management program that can be freely deployed on users' own servers is also one of the many needs of a considerable number of enterprise users in the market.

In enterprise-level applications, instant messaging products must conform to the characteristics of the enterprise itself, strive to be integrated with business processes, be integrated with enterprise office software, or become part of its enterprise management system. Therefore, specialization is the core of the development of enterprise instant messaging products.

In order to achieve efficient communication between enterprises and between enterprises and employees, enterprise instant messaging products need to provide not only a simple software product, but a communication platform covering various communication methods. Only in this way Only in this way can the enterprise truly save costs and improve work efficiency. Therefore integration is a necessary means for the development of instant messaging products.

There is no need to elaborate on the importance of security for enterprise instant messaging products. It is an important reference indicator for enterprises to select products, and is also directly related to the future development speed of the enterprise instant messaging market. ⑴ The acceleration of informatization construction will promote the development of the enterprise instant messaging market

The Chinese government actively promotes the development of enterprise informatization applications. Relevant national departments have proposed to accelerate the establishment of a public service platform for enterprise information applications, and the government will organize and provide certain financial support to small and medium-sized enterprises.

Currently, relevant government departments have begun work on experience exchange, technology promotion, and talent training in e-commerce applications for small and medium-sized enterprises. As a part of enterprise information construction, enterprise instant messaging can also get development opportunities from this policy.

As service providers expand the market, they also regard serving enterprises as one of their priorities. More and more software developers regard the development of enterprise instant messaging application products as one of their priorities in software development. The government actively promotes enterprises to raise awareness and deepen their understanding of the importance, necessity and connotation of informatization, which indirectly increases the awareness and urgency of enterprises in the application of instant messaging, and uses the construction of instant messaging as a booster to accelerate enterprise development.

⑵ Unified communications has become a development trend

Compared with personal instant messaging needs, enterprise instant messaging requires the integration of more communication methods. A single PC-to-PC message transmission will definitely not be able to meet the needs of enterprises. Due to the pursuit of efficiency by enterprises, enterprises have increasing requirements for efficiency, and the effective communication of information is a necessary condition to ensure the improvement of internal efficiency of enterprises. This requires future instant messaging service providers to be able to provide SMS, email, phone, Multi-channel solutions such as fax, as well as service platforms that support multimedia such as text, audio, and video.

⑶ Agency channels shrink and partners strengthen

In addition to general agents, industry agents and regional distributors, value-added agents and solution business partners will become the future enterprise instant messaging channels As an important part of the development of product channels, their status in channel construction will gradually increase, and they will become one of the main sources of income for service providers. There are two reasons:

First, agents are not stable enough for enterprise instant messaging software service providers. First of all, agents have the right to choose agent products; secondly, service providers cannot meet the needs of corporate customers for constant technological adjustments; thirdly, agents will weaken the service provider’s ability to control customers. Once customers have technical needs, it is difficult for service providers to directly , Efficient service provision will directly lead to customer satisfaction with the service provider's products.

Secondly, partners have their own core technologies, such as Anychat, ERP, OA and other products. In the process of integrating enterprise instant messaging modules, they have a good measurement and understanding of the products. Once the products are excellent, , partners will fully recommend the products provided by the service provider to customers; in addition, there is a mutually beneficial relationship between partners and service providers, and partners can profit from the integrated enterprise instant messaging service. What's more important is that service providers can directly contact end customers and provide them with complete services.