Telepresence spurs on APAC market growth

By Peter Dinham
Wednesday, 29 April 2009 14:19

Business IT - Technology

The entry of local players, Hong Kong’s CPCNet and China’s Huawei Technologies into the Asia Pacific market with their own telepresence offerings, has boosted the regional market for the video conferencing technology.

Market analysts Ovum, in its report on the telepresence market released today, says, up to this time, telepresence had been a global vendor/global service provider story – involving companies like Cisco, Tandberg, Polycom, AT&T, BT and Verizon Business - but the momentum has now shifted with the entry into the Asia Pacific market by the two local regional players.

Ovum’s Lucy Arole says the market shift has been brought about by CPCNet’s launch of its managed high-definition video conferencing solution, VC2, and Huawei’s launch of its own line of telepresence equipment. Added to that, says Arole, was the launch at the end of last year, by local player SingTel, of its managed HD video conferencing service, which now includes telepresence.
 
According to Arole, the potential for HD video conferencing in China is huge, with telepresence providing an extremely useful tool to help manufacturers demonstrate their products without the need for travel.

“So far, telepresence deployments in China have been made by the major players in the HD video conferencing market, Tandberg, Polycom and Cisco,” Arole says, adding that global managed telepresence offers from AT&T and BT have had “limited reach into the Asia-Pacific region as the operators build up network operations centre capacity to support inter-carrier and inter-company video networking.”

Arole says the release of Huawei’s telepresence solution will help the market grow within China.
“Huawei is renowned for its low-cost solutions so we may expect pricing to become more competitive for video conferencing units in the future if the Huawei solution can compete with its western competitors.”
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