By David Sims
[email protected]
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music
is Lyle Lovett’s Pontiac:
Plantronics is full of beans this morning, with press advisories about new headsets and
a contest to win a place on a space
flight.
As Plantronics notes today
is the 36-year anniversary of the moon landing, and since Plantronics
provided headset Neil Armstrong used to broadcast the “That’s one small step
for man, one giant leap for mankind” transmission from the moon in 1969, the
company’s rolling out a “new brand identity and national advertising campaign,”
according to company officials, replete with a new corporate logo and tagline –
“Sound innovation.”
They’re also launching the “Plantronics to Space and Beyond”
promotion, offering consumers “a chance to win a seat on board one of the first
commercial flights to space,” according to the
contest site. First CoffeeSM hasn’t checked the “full details,”
but is sure there’s a list of qualifying details from here to the moon. If only
you got miles…
So let’s get to the product announcements:
First up we have the CS55
and CS55 Micro wireless headsets, being billed by company officials as “the first all-wireless headsets in the US
to use the new 1.9 GHz voice-dedicated frequency.” They’ll be available in
October.
The 1.9 GHz DECT standard frequency is a new voice-dedicated
frequency, designed to get rid of interference from nearby Wi-Fi networks, cordless
telephones, and other wireless office equipment common on other frequencies.
The headsets themselves, with small booms and weighing 24 to
26 grams and costing about $300, let users move up to 300 feet from their desks
while still on a call.
The Pulsar 590 is
a Bluetooth stereo headset that lets users listen
wirelessly to music and movies and switch to mobile phone calls by pressing one
button. Available with a universal Bluetooth audio adapter, the Pulsar 590
provides immediate wireless compatibility for any device with a headphone jack,
such as laptops, home stereos, MP3 players, including Apple iPods, and
multimedia devices, such as Sony PSP.
The Pulsar 590’s extended range capabilities let users listen
to music or have conversations up to 33 feet away from their laptop, music
device or cell phone. You can get the headband wearing style with pivoting ear
cushions that provide all-day wearing comfort so you pretty much never have to
actually talk to a human being all day.
There’s also an in-flight cable allows the headset to be
used with the Bluetooth radio disabled, a requirement for most airline travel.
It runs about $150 or $200 with the bells and whistles.
And for a nice gift for your friends in commercial aviation
there’s a whole “new portfolio” of three headsets approved by the Federal
Aviation Administration. In 1999 the FAA selected Plantronics to be its sole
provider of headsets for Air Traffic Control, so they know the industry.
The hope is that these nifty new products will pull the
company out of its earnings slump. Yesterday they announced quarterly profit
fell 2.9 percent, from $22.3 million to $21.7 million on revenues of $148.9
million, up about 13 percent over the previous year’s quarterly revenue. The
company blamed the dip in profit on weaker demand for their office products in
Europe.
…
Never underestimate the benefit of a catchy opening line.
Most press releases First CoffeeSM wades through – but hey, we do it
all for you – are MEGO turgid affairs, along the lines of “Acme Anvils, a
leading provider of roadrunner solutions, announces the Turbo-Rocket Powered
Thingamajig upgrade to its award-winning suite of…” So naturally the following
first line got the rest of the release read:
“For small business
Davids competing against big business Goliaths, NetOffice has created the
slingshot.”
A small thing to you, Dear Reader, who does not have to wade
through stupefying obtuse prose every day to extract the nuggets, but much
appreciated by First CoffeeSM and, hence, worthy of a few inches of
mention as a reward.
NetOffice began in 2004 as a spin-off of an eight-year-old
turnkey ASP and offers voice and data communications capabilities through a
single point of contact – a Web page accessible through any Internet-connected
Windows or Macintosh computer. You’re at the office whenever you log in.
NetOffice says they combine such telephony services as
toll-free voice and fax numbers, auto-attendants, Touch-tone-controlled
messages, call routing, and voicemail with data management tools such as e-mail,
contact, calendar, task, and file management, CRM, file sharing and storage and
e-mail marketing “for as little as 67 cents a day.”
“Its toll-free phone services route calls to any number to
ensure no calls are missed,” company officials promise. With wireless modem
cards, WiFi hotspots, and Internet access on airplanes, “NetOffice users can
run their businesses from virtually anywhere.”
So grab your slingshot, David, go out there and put
Microsoft out of business.
…
Epicor is announcing their Q2 2005 results,
and the numbers are up. George Klaus, chairman, CEO and president of Epicor
called them the strongest second-quarter
results in the company’s 20-year history.
Total revenues for the second quarter were $71.0 million,
compared with $48.6 million in the prior year’s quarter, for a growth rate of
46%. Revenues for the second quarter 2005 included $20.9 million for Scala
Business Solutions. Total revenue growth excluding the contribution from Scala,
for both periods, was 10%.
License revenues were $19.0 million for the second quarter
compared to $12.2 million in the second quarter of 2004, up 55%. License
revenues for the second quarter 2005 included $5.2 million for Scala and for
the second quarter 2004 included $1.1 million for Scala. Total license revenue
growth excluding the contribution from Scala for both periods was 24%.
Total revenues for the six months ended June 30, 2005 were
$138.3 million compared with the six-month period ended 2004 at $92.0 million.
License revenues for the six-month period were $35.8 million compared with
$22.7 million in the prior year period.
Last week Supply &
Demand Chain Executive magazine put Epicor on its fourth-annual listing of
the Supply & Demand Chain Executive 100. The company markets CRM, ERP and
supply chain management software to midmarket firms worldwide.
…
That whoop of joy you hear is coming from Starbucks
headquarters in Seattle. Reuters
is reporting that the U.S. daily
consumption of coffee rose to 53 percent of the population in a 2005
survey, compared with 49 percent in a 2004 survey, according to National
Coffee Association of USA findings:
“The annual survey, based on nationwide random-telephone
interviews of nearly 3,000 people, found daily coffee drinking among those 18
to 24 years of age reached a record high 26 percent of the respondents, up 4
percentage points from 2004.”
Other age groups showed growth, but none came close to the
all-important 18 to 24 demographic.
Daily consumption of “traditional coffee,” a category left
unspecified in the news report, rebounded to 50 percent in 2005, snapping a
six-year drop. Consumption of gourmet coffee stayed in the 15-16 percent range.
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