Cisco announces line of dedicated desktop videoconferencing devices for $1,000 to $2,000 each
Cisco hopes to put a $1500 videoconferencing device on every desk — Hot on the heels of its lower-priced videoconferencing gear for conference rooms, Cisco is now hoping …
Context & Ripple Effects
Cisco's desk-device line lands three months after Google's February 2014 pitch to replace office teleconference systems with a $999 Chromebox, turning what was a conference-room hardware business into an explicit per-desk price fight — Cisco answering at $1,000 to $2,000, with a stated target of a $1,500 unit on every desk. It follows the company's recent move into lower-priced conference-room gear, so the price ladder now runs end to end.
The stakes read differently because of history: GigaOM called Cisco's last big consumer-hardware gamble, the living-room push, misguided back in December 2008, so this is a second attempt at volume hardware outside the networking core — this time anchored to the enterprise. The announcement also dovetails with Cisco's stated plan, laid out in March 2014, to begin selling cloud services to large corporate customers within two years, which gives the desk devices a services story rather than a box story. Pickup across MarketWatch, eWeek, and ZDNet on the day suggests how closely rivals and resellers were watching the price point.
First-order effects
- Cisco's own high-end telepresence business now faces an internal price ceiling: buyers evaluating room systems can point to a $1,500 desk endpoint from the same vendor, pressuring Cisco's sales motion on every large deal.
- Google's Chromebox pitch gets a direct like-for-like competitor rather than a strawman — IT buyers comparing office video systems now have a named $999 option and a named $1,000-$2,000 option side by side.
Second-order effects
- The desk-device push gives Cisco a hardware foothold to attach its planned corporate cloud services to over the next two years, shifting revenue justification from endpoint specs to subscriptions — the model Google's cheap-box approach implicitly forces on everyone.
- Room-system-centric vendors and their channel partners face margin compression as refresh conversations start from per-seat pricing instead of per-room capex, pushing them toward software and management layers to defend value.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, enterprise videoconferencing restructures around inexpensive desk hardware plus recurring services — a shift that rewards whoever controls the software layer, and explains why a networking vendor is betting on endpoints at all.
- Dedicated-device vendors will increasingly be judged against free or near-free consumer video tools creeping into the office, forcing differentiation on manageability, security, and integration rather than call quality — a contest where Cisco's enterprise relationships are the asset and hardware margins are the casualty.
The trend: Enterprise videoconferencing is migrating from expensive room-based systems to cheap per-desk endpoints, with value shifting to the cloud services attached to the hardware.