At the Metaswitch Forum 2014 event I had a chance to catch up with Randall Lee of Revolabs to learn about the company’s latest activities. I came away thinking the company has a solid opportunity to take share in the conference phone market.

The company that once specialized only in the professional AV market has recently become a wholly owned subsidiary of Japan’s Yamaha.

One of the big lines of busines for the company is OEM work where they manufacture the Aastra/Mitel OEM S850i, a very innovative device I was checking out in the exhibit hall last night in fact. It is a refreshing look at conference phones in that it is a round tower with DECT microphones and a handset which are all detachable.

The company also makes the Cisco 8831, while displacing Polycom.

Their FLX UC 500 is a USB conference phone with full audio range up to 20khz and it supports Lync, WebEx, Skype as well as music which Randall assures me can play quite loud thanks to two embedded speakers and an external powered 20 watt amplifier. This full duplex, four-microphone, echo cancelled device also picks up sound up to 12 feet and will be released in Q3.

The FLX 1000 will be similar to the 500 but also be an IP phone which Lee says is ideal for “huddle rooms” allowing participantes to bridge SIP PBX calls as well as USB through a BYO laptop method. We can expect more innovation from the company coming soon like more wireless microphone support, daisy-chaning and a betting man (is that politically incorrect to say these days?) would surmise that we can expect more Yamaha integration going forward. After all, this storied Japanes brand still makes super-premium audio gear and this acquisition of a US-based company means a plethora of new opportunities for all involved.