Video Conferencing Market for Sale?

Over the past 12 months observers would be forgiven for thinking that the video conferencing market place was up for sale. Of the top five video conferencing manufacturers’ only Polycom continues to trade in exactly the same guise, but even here there are rumours that the venture capitalist, Apax Partners, are interested in purchasing a controlling interest.

Tandberg: On the 1st October 2009 Cisco announced its’ intention to acquire the Norwegian video conferencing manufacturer, Tandberg. However, it took a further 7 months until it completed the acquisition on 19th April 2010 paying a staggering $3.3 billion. We understand that Tandberg is to be renamed Video Point and the product range marketed as video conferencing endpoints design to sit around a Cisco Telepresence suite.

LifeSize Communications: In November 2009 Logitech confirmed that it intended to acquire the High Definition Video Conferencing equipment manufacturer, LifeSize Communications, for $405m in cash.

Sony IPELA: Despite rumours to the contrary, on the 1st December 2009 Sony Europe announced that it was withdrawing from the video conferencing market place throughout EMEA effective as of the 31st March 2010. This followed their withdrawal from the American market several years ago and now leaves them active only in Asia; you have to question if and when Sony will withdraw from the video conferencing market entirely!

Aethra: In February 2010 Radvision, the Israeli manufacturer of video conferencing infrastructure products, announced the acquisition of selected assets of the Aethra Group of Companies, the Italian video conferencing endpoint manufacturer. This launched Radvision into the video conferencing market place as a complete end-to-end solution provider and effectively changed its channel model completely.

If you would like to receive an honest and unbiased guide to the current video conferencing market please contact TEN Video Communications on 0845 519 5531 or go to www.tenvc.co.uk.