MUMBAI, MARCH 3: Video-conferencing solutions company PictureTel Corp will launch a highly sclalable product that promises to overcome many of the present technological limitations. The product, code named Stinger and B6, will be launched mid-March and will scalability from desktop to a large system.The company which has a 42 per cent of the worldwide market in video conferencing saw a drop in value last year in the range of 16-20 per cent. It also affected the sales which dropped to around $340 million from over $400 million. However the volumes went up by around 42 per cent.
PictureTel has pinned high hopes on this and the coming product series to improve fortunes. The Stinger will work on IP/ISDN/WAN and most of the present protocols and have a user-friendly interface.
"The most important feature would be data collaboration; mixing and matching all kinds of carriers and mediums to enable a perfect communication," says PictureTel country head, south Asia operations and director TN Sundar.
The product, which will begin shipment in July this year, will have in built multi-point conferencing, bridging, and best scheduling to mix and match transmission from various networks. The product can also work using Internet Protocols (IP) in an intranet. Stinger will be priced at around $10,000-15,000. "We are looking launching lower version for small office home office market (SOHO)," said Sundar.
The Indian market has been growing at a pace of around 30-40 per cent but now it may touch 50 per cent. PictureTel had a growth of around 70 per cent last year. The Indian operations accounted for around $10 million of the global operations. "Our major orders included Andhra government project to link district headquarters, Gujarat project, corporate like Reliance, and Indian space agency, ISRO's requirements," he said.
The video conferencing market would go up to Rs 100 crore by 2002. In India, the government has been sending right signals for the growth of the industry. The drastic cut in ISDN connectivity announced by VSNL and MTNL was a good measure, Sundar said. The video-conferencing market in India for the lower end devices market is growing fast. New launches include products from LG, costing Rs 7,500 and Aver Media, again in the same range.
The LG model, LPC U30 does a number of functions like video mail and editing digital photos and images. The camera and editing can be controlled through PC software such as NetMeeting from Microsoft and output signal is in the form of USB.
Copyright © 2000 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.