Plantronics sees the HP Elite Slice G2 Audio-Ready as providing formidable conference room advantages, including the elimination of cable clutter from tables, and is transitioning from the Polycom MSR series to these Polycom + HP SRS Bundles for Microsoft room systems.
The ending of the joint venture between Sennheiser and William Demant, which will see the Sennheiser unified communications business transition to William Demant on January 1 2020, means a much more aggressive growth strategy, and new VP Jim Fairweather said that planning has already begun, which includes a more focused channel strategy.
Jabra resellers get access to a wireless earbud headset that has appeal to consumer product users, but at a much higher quality that is certified for Skype for Business, and which can spare them a long series of support issues compared to the kind of products in this form factor that have been available until now.
Jabra’s first corded model in their next-gen Engage franchise is aimed at the more price-sensitive part of the market, but still contains some interesting technology innovations.
The newly announced ones are the Voyager 4200 UC, aimed at the ‘corridor warrior,’ and the Savi 8200, which extends the range of the Plantronics line that supports deskphones, mobile phones and PCs. They also recently announced the Elara 60 series, which is a mobile phone station.
Sennheiser is targeting the burgeoning unified collaboration market for headsets with a type of competitor displacement promo which is a first for the company in North America in recent memory.
Plantronics reworks its channel program to give greater emphasis to implementing their SaaS management solution, and to selling their hardware within broader solutions rather than simply as peripherals.
The Engage franchise, available in models which connect to two and five devices respectively, and in mono, stereo and lightweight convertible models, is designed for dense contact centre environments, and allows for connection of three times as many wireless headsets with no loss of quality.
Plantronics moves far beyond headsets by buying Polycom, which brings them into three additional businesses that are synergistic to their headset core.
HeadSetup Pro Manager provides the ability to roll out updates globally, as well as full asset management and configuration management capabilities. It can also scale to manage up to a million devices.
Sennheiser adds a distributor with focus on the communications space, after trimming its distribution channel by about half a year ago.
The new Sennheiser headsets, designed specifically for knowledge workers in noisy open offices, feature high end adaptive noise cancellation capability.
Plantronics’ newest member of its road warrior-focused Voyager line is aimed at people who need a headset optimized for occasional travel into especially noisy areas.
Sennheiser, best known for its premium consumer products, already has a strong distribution network in Canada, but adds two more distributors to generate more opportunities and stimulate even greater awareness of its presence in the commercial space.
The Voyager Focus UC becomes the top of the line model in Plantronics’ noise cancelling office products line. It also features Dynamic Mute Alert feature, which senses and alerts users when they are trying to talk when muted.
A key theme with these releases is the adapation of superior noise cancelling technology, which was originally deployed in the consumer space, for enterprise products.
