“After 30 years of enabling millions of distance meetings with our award-winning conference phones, we are now adding conference cameras into our acclaimed portfolio,” says Peter Renkel, CEO at Konftel.
While that may have seemed overly-cautious to some, it surely doesn't detract from judging the new product line on its own merits.
“It's about time, you might say, but we firmly believe in doing things properly. And that's the reason why we will not just start selling cameras that complement our phones; we will make functional and value-added solutions that are easy to choose and use,” adds Renkel.
The new solutions are named Konftel Collaboration-- and they come in Small, Medium or Large. Designed for meetings with up to 6, 12 or 20 persons in the room, all three packages include conference phones, cameras, and hubs to enable one-cable connection to a PC or Mac.
Initially the collaboration packages will make use of two high-performance conference camera models. Konftel Cam20 sends an image in ultra 4K HD resolution. The 120° wide field of view makes it suitable for the small huddle room, to make sure everyone fits in the picture when close to the camera. The Konftel Cam40 is a full PTZ conference camera with 1080p/60fps HD video image and 12x optical zoom.
These Konftel Cameras will also be available as separate products.
In the Konftel Collaboration Small category, the first solution comes with the Konftel Cam20, and the Red Dot-design awarded Konftel Ego speakerphone.
Konftel Collaboration Medium and Large solutions build on the Konftel Cam40 and a choice of hybrid conference phone in the Konftel 300-series. Expansion microphones can be added for large meetings with up to 20 participants, and for even larger meetings, a PA-box connects to installed room audio systems as an option for two of the packages.
“Our new high quality collaboration solutions will offer best-value-for-money when companies all over the world look for endpoints to their cloud-based collaboration tools, whether they use Skype for Business, Zoom or any other service,” says Torbjörn Karlsson, Product Manager at Konftel. “And some customers will find our hybrid approach, where you easily combine USB and dialled calls in the Konftel 300-models, a highly valuable feature.”
Konftel Collaboration Small, up to 6 participants:
Konftel C20Ego (Konftel Cam20 + Konftel Ego + HUB)
Konftel Collaboration Medium, up to 12 participants:
Konftel C40300 (Konftel CAM40 + Konftel 300IPx/300Wx/300/300Mx + HUB)
Konftel Collaboration Large, up to 20 participants:
Konftel C40300 (Konftel 300IPx/300Wx/300/300Mx + Konftel CAM40 + HUB + expansion microphones. PA-box option for 300 and 300IPx.)
Global shipments will start in Q3 2018.