Cisco ships 30 millionth IP Phone

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San Jose based Cisco Systems sometimes jokingly gets referred to as the “plumber of the internet” but with the firm having recently shipped its 30 millionth IP Phone and its new line of video phones and tablets set to take the world by storm, Cisco is proving that no matter how dumb the pipe, there’s nothing dumb about this plumber.
“We think of video as the new voice,” Steve Slattery, Cisco’s vice president and general manager of telephony recently told Forbes. Indeed, Cisco has invested a lot in video conferencing, going all out with the launch of its first videophones back in March, its Cius (see-us) video tablet in June and its Umi video TV conferencing in October. Even Oprah has dumped Skype for the Umi on-air, a huge marketing coup for Cisco.
But despite all the hype about video, Slattery says videophones are still just a “very small percentage”  of Cisco’s current business, with good old IP phones still the products lining Cisco’s rather deep pockets. Indeed, in the IP phone market, Cisco leads with a rather whopping 33.4% share.
The firm says it sold its first IP phone 13 years ago, reaching the 10 million IP phone mark in 2006 and the 22 million mark approximately a year back.
“We’re hitting these milestones faster and faster,” Slattery told Forbes, noting that the 30 millionth IP phone had been sold to HSBC bank.
Of course, where companies buy IP phones, they’re also liable to buy a whole host of other networking equipment from Cisco, including all those routers and switches which are the bread and butter of the firm’s business.
While regular voice is certainly not going to be disappearing from Cisco’s roadmap anytime soon, Slattery did say his firm would be announcing new video products soon, most likely at the firm’s mid-November Collaboration Summit event.
“Video enables much more engaged conversations,” said Slattery, adding that he believes someday soon videophones may even make up 80% of Cisco’s phone shipments. “Video enables much more engaged conversations,” he concluded.