A new report by global market research and advisory firm Technavio forecasts that the web real-time communications (webRTC) market will grow by roughly $66.6 billion by 2027.
The report estimated that the webRTC market will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 48.9 percent between 2022 and 2027.
The report attributed various drivers to webRTC’s market growth, writing:
The growth of the market depends on several factors, including the growing popularity of video and audio conferencing, the increasing proliferation of WebRTC apps in social media, and the rise in the number of connected devices.”
WebRTC is an open-source platform that enables P2P connection for voice and video conferencing, with WebRTC-enabled applications obtaining audio, video, or any other data stream. WebRTC empowers clients to access the stream through a microphone or a webcam via a peer-to-peer data channel.
Technavio’s report also included historical data and highlighted that the webRTC market was valued at around $1,339 million in 2017, illustrating the sector’s meteoric growth in recent years, primarily enabled by the pandemic and the rise of remote and hybrid working and the need for enterprise-grade video and voice conferencing solutions.
What Did Technavio Find Were the Biggest Market Drivers and Trends?
The primary driver, expectedly, was the growing popularity of video and audio conferencing. “Voice and video conferencing are crucial for IT infrastructure and businesses to enhance communication and collaboration among employees, partners, and customers,” the report wrote.
The significant innovations made in video and voice conferencing technology over the years, and its availability to a mass audience, were credited with the swelling popularity of these products.
Technavio attributed the increased adoption of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) practices as the primary market trend, with BYOD encouraging employees to bring their own devices to workplaces. Technavio found that roughly one-third of global businesses provide devices, such as smartphones and tablets, to their staff and that more than half encourage employees to bring their own devices to work.
WebRTC solutions offer enterprise-grade solutions supporting BYOD practices that enhance communication tools in small businesses, ensuring a high-quality user experience. These solutions underscore the lower-end processing power of a smartphone to send multiple signals to the users in a conversation. WebRTC solutions can reduce the burden by tweaking the frame rate and resolution supplied by the device.
What Did Technavio Consider the Key Challenge to Realising Market Growth for webRTC?
The absence of high-end video conferencing features.
“Since WebRTC technology is in the nascent stages,” the report explained, “it lacks a few high-end video conferencing features, such as access to numerous devices and networks.”
There are several issues facing WebRTC, including CPU overload problems as the processor has to decode, encode, and dispense video and audio simultaneously. Additionally, the combination of video and audio quality, and the sizes of the files, produce screen size issues. Smartphones’ CPU stress (triggered by numerous applications) can lead to battery drain issues.
Key Market Segmentation
The report covered market segmentation, including geography (North America, Europe, APAC, South America and the Middle East and Africa), platform (mobile, browser and PC), and application (voice, video and data sharing).
Geographically, North America is estimated to contribute to 35 percent of the growth of the global market during the forecast period. As well as the expected factors behind this contribution — such as the highly developed economies of the United States and Canada and the population’s high disposable income leading to increased demand for webRTC services — Technavio also cited the importance of many critical IT-oriented industries recovering after the pandemic.
“The resumption in end-user industries like the gaming industry, e-commerce business, education and training providers, and consumer service representatives led to an increase in demand for webRTC,” Technavio’s report wrote.
Video was identified as the fastest-growing segment in the webRTC market.
WebRTC solutions enable video conferencing where users can communicate through instant streaming feeds without downloading extra software or plugins. Users can leverage reliable and enterprise-grade video conferencing capabilities through the web or mobile applications. WebRTC technology is an extension of the browser rather than a separate platform or application.
“WebRTC video conferencing solutions provide superior, secure, and affordable video conferencing facilities, as compared with other options available in the market,” Technavio wrote. “Such factors will drive the segment during the forecast period.”
