Polycom’s profits fell in Q2, partly because demand in Europe slumped 2% as the videoconferencing company earned globally $5.6 million on sales of $358.5 million. EMEA represents 22% or $80.4 million of Polycom’s revenue… (actually, a low penetration when compared to America’s 50% and APAC 27%).

Profit’s down, business flat…maybe that’s why CEO Andrew Miller says, "In the second half of this year, we will be launching a series of products that we believe will be game-changing."

Game-changing. That’s quite a promise when you make it to Wall Street. Then you need to put your money where your mouth is: so Eric Brown, Polycom COO and CFO confirms, “Our primary focus for the balance of the year will be allocating resources to support our key upcoming new product launches.”

Miller continues, “Most recently, we launched the new Polycom RealPresence Resource Manager offering that further differentiates our Polycom RealPresence Platform with support for large scale video deployments of up to 10,000 endpoints, including mobile devices, multi-tenancy for service providers to deliver Video-as-a-Service cost-effectively, and a new suite of rich, open APIs that extends the value and ecosystem around our RealPresence Platform.” Read more...

According to IDC Research, the EMEA enterprise videoconferencing equipment market will grow 14.6% CAGR, spurred by the increasing need of the enterprise market for the application of video and telepresence for unified communications and collaboration (UC&C) purposes as well as diminishing cultural barriers to video acceptance within organizations.

Says Melissa Fremeijer, senior research analyst, EMEA Unified Communications and Collaboration. "While the key driver for investing in videoconferencing has initially been the need to reduce travel costs, we find that increasingly companies are interested in the benefits of enhanced team collaboration and effectiveness of meetings."

For the growing sophisticated customer base, video is no longer seen as a “silo-ed” technology used merely for face to face internal meetings, but increasingly adopted as part of a UC&C infrastructure and integrated into daily business processes via built-in and customizable applications.

Moving beyond the conference room meeting, video use has become a mainstay application in many vertical markets. Read more...

Starting in September in Europe, Extron Electronics will hold the The Extron Workshop: Designing Digital Systems That Work, a one-day event for system designers and integrators that focuses on the practical aspects of designing digital AV systems.

Instructors from the Extron Institute program provide a full day of training and real world demos on how to solve common digital AV challenges by integrating a wide range of products such as cables and equalizers, extenders, signal processors, switchers, matrix switchers, and XTP Systems into system designs.

"The Workshop concentrates on the practicalities of system design and integration, sharing all the valuable lessons we've learned in the lab and in the field during our long history with digital technologies,” says Andrew Edwards, President of Extron. "As I promised, we're reaching out to you, our customers, with more places and ways to learn about Extron digital technologies and products to grow your business." Read more...

Vidyo delivers 5-megapixel multipoint video conferences with data collaboration on the new MacBook Pro from Apple.

With the ability to render a mix of 1080p and 720p video streams, and up to 5MP data share for an aggregate maximum of 5 megapixels, Vidyo says its software delivers 2.5X times the pixel count of hardware telepresence systems on Apple’s latest device.

“While legacy telepresence platforms require redesign and fork-lift upgrades to take advantage of evolving technology, Vidyo’s software-based platform affords the flexibility to c Read more...