Cisco Systems who are currently making a big move into the consumer electronics market is currently talking to Telstra about turning the household TV into a video conferencing device for both private and business use.
Cisco Systems who are currently making a big move into the consumer electronics market is currently talking to Telstra about turning the household TV into a video conferencing device for both private and business use.
The technology which is set to be made available for the home, is set to be revealed in mid 2011 and is based on Cisco’s TelePresence corporate-video conferencing system.
It will allow users to chat, leave messages, uplift and download videos for friends, said Ned Hooper, head of the consumer business at Cisco.
Cisco who has witnessed a significant drop in traditional enterprise business sales has said that increased use of video by both consumers and small medium business, would also benefit Cisco’s main business of selling routers and switches and set top boxes as well as storage devices like their new Cisco Media Hub.
Slowing demand in enterprise and telecommunication markets has resulted in back- to-back sales drops at Cisco in the past two quarters. Video, which Chief Executive John Chambers has called “the killer app,” needs more bandwidth than voice and data, pushing service providers and consumers to buy more gear to accommodate the bigger loads.
Internet traffic he said at the recent CES show will grow fourfold by 2013 as video consumption increases. He also said that Video now accounts for a third of consumer Web traffic and will jump to 91 percent by 2013, Cisco said.
Around the world Cisco is cuddling up to telco carriers like Telstra with new content and set top box offerings and the introduction of an at home video conference system will allow workers to talk to their office and consumers with their family and friends via a monitor or TV screen. It will also grow data traffic for carriers.
In recent months Cisco has acquired the Flip video camera, they are also set to launch wireless audio and video in Australia as they accelerate its push into the consumer market. In recent weeks the Company has met with mass retailers such as Harvey Norman and JB Hi Fi as well as The Good Guys to discuss the launch of several new consumer technology products.
In May, the company bought Pure Digital Technologies, maker of the Flip video camera, for $590 million. 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, Hooper said.
“There’s a big opportunity for us,” Hooper, 42, said. “You will start to see very big growth numbers on top of the base consumer business we report every quarter.”
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. Hooper, who also runs Cisco’s mergers and acquisitions team, said Cisco may provide a product that includes a camera and allows two-way video conversations.
While Pure Digital had sold more than 2 million Flip cameras, Cisco bought the closely held company mostly for the software, Hooper said. Cisco will focus less on delivering devices and more on helping customers such as AT&T and Verizon Communications offer video conferencing to consumers, he said.
Cisco will also face competition from consumer brands such as Apple and skype, which offers videoconferencing through its iChat service, and Google, whose Gmail program includes video chat.
