Cisco to Offer Video-Chat Television

The Challenging market condition at the moment represents different things to different businesses.  For Cisco it could be coincidental or deliberate that they seem to be refocusing on customer’s homes rather than their business network equipment.  According to The Mercury News website Cisco is working with phone and cable carriers on products and services that let consumers hold video conferences through their televisions, see Cisco to use Medianet to Deliver Next Generation Connected Life at Home Solution.

The new system is said to be based on Cisco’s TelePresence corporate-video conferencing system, will debut within 12 months. In addition to holding video chats, users will also be able to exchange messages and leave videos for friends, said Ned Hooper, head of the consumer business at Cisco.

Building on its domestic networking market through the Cisco Linksys product line and the purchase of Pure Digital earlier this year; “Cisco plans to use software from that company to expand in the market for home-networking gear, camcorders and video applications, which will grow 50 percent to $60 billion by 2013”.

"There's a big opportunity for us," Hooper, 42, said in an interview. "You will start to see very big growth numbers on top of the base consumer business we report every quarter."

With many websites offering live and recorded videos Cisco thinks the quantity of IP traffic will grow over the next three years and "Nearly 90 percent of all consumer IP traffic in 2012 will be video"

“The consumer TelePresence products will integrate software from Pure Digital, Hooper said. The Flip software automatically uploads video to the Web when users plug the camera into a personal computer's USB drive”.

I think this approach put Cisco is in a win, win position even with strong competitions from the likes of eBay’s Skype, Apple’s iChat and Google’s Gmail, which all offer video-chat. According the article, Cisco will focus less on delivering devices and more on helping customers such as AT&T and Verizon Communications offer video conferencing to consumers.

Source:http://www.mercurynews.com