Cisco IP Phone 7985G Videophone Part 2

August 29, 2005


It appears the new Cisco IP Phone 7985G Videophone is OEM'ed from Tandberg (image to left which is identical to the image I posted about the Cisco videophone on Friday).

If the Cisco videophone has the same feature-set as the Tandberg 150 MXP, then it does indeed support SIP, which I was unsure about when I broke the story on the new Cisco videphone. In fact, the Tandberg 150 MXP also supports the H.323 protocol as well, which is a plus since many legacy videophone systems from Polycom and other manufacturers support H.323. I wonder if Cisco also added their SKINNY protocol to the phone? That would make it 3 protocols running on the Cisco videophone.

According to Tandberg's website the Tandberg 150 MXP has the following features, which I assume the Cisco phone will have as well:
• Optional IM and webconferencing
• URI Dialing
• H.323 & SIP support.
• Up to 512 kbps IP
• Superior video quality incorporating the H.264 standard
• Standards-based embedded encryption (AES & DES)
• Protection against network interruptions with automatic Downspeeding and IPLR

The Tandberg 150 MXP retails for US$2,990, which seems extremely steep to me. I doubt Cisco could get away with selling a business desktop videphone for three thousand dollars. Even high executives such as CEOs aren't going to want to pay $3000 for a desktop phone -that's more than the price of many IP-PBX systems! Just how much margin and markup is on this Tandberg phone that Cisco can still make a few bucks on it? Seems very odd to me that Cisco didn't just build their own videophone. They certainly have the expertise to do this. Further, I would think they could build it less expensively and sell it for much less with a higher profit margin. The only thing I can think of it that this phone is more of a "conference room" videophone and not a desktop videophone for every employee. Certainly today most high-end videoconferencing systems do cost around $3000 so it does fit much better in the conference room videoconferencing space.

Personally, I think Cisco would be better off going after the business desktop videophone space. Let's assume most small to medium corporations have between 1-4 conference rooms. Assuming the max - 4 conference rooms, that's only 4 X $3000 = $12,000 sale per business. Now instead let's assume Cisco makes a desktop videophone that retails for $1000 and assume the average business has 50 employees. Multiple $1000 X 50 = $50,000 sale per business. Of course, not every business is going to need videophones on every single employees desk, but if given the choice between a IP videophone and regular non-video IP phone that is only a few hundred dollars less, many will opt for the more expensive video phones.

Of course, you could simply buy a USB-based $40 Logitech Webcam , but until (if?) the PC replaces the desktop phone, we'll still need feature-rich desktop phones.



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Comments to Cisco IP Phone 7985G Videophone Part 2


  1. Shaun Ewing :
    August 31, 2005 8:49 PM

    This is what the 7985G will look like:

    http://images.edropbox.net/cisco7985.jpg

    It appears to be identical to the Tandberg device apart from the colour change.

    It will support SCCP. I'm unsure about the other protocols. The latest Callmanager 4.1 device pack includes the firmware and documentation for this phone.


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