To provide a telephone apparatus and its control method capable of eliminating the troublesomeness of its user's changing his or her presence status, and preventing noncoincidence of the presence status with the real status of the user.

The presence status of the user is automatically changed by a controller 12 when the user performs a call operation with an IP telephone 10, since the controller 12 is equipped with an automatic change function. Therefore, if the user of the IP telephone 10 performs a call operation for example when the presence status of the IP telephone 10 is set at 'off seat', the presence status is automatically changed to 'on seat' by the controller 12. Accordingly, the troublesomeness of the user for changing his or her presence status can be eliminated. Moreover, the presence status of the IP telephone 10 is prevented from becoming different from the real status of the user, since the presence status is automatically changed to 'on seat' by the controller 12.