Cisco Ups Offer for TANDBERG
Wednesday, November 18th, 2009
The financial badminton match between Cisco and TANDBERG seems to be drawing to a close. Cisco has once again revised its offer (which is now up to around $3.4B) to purchase the videoconferencing leader, placing the birdie back in TANDBERG shareholders’ court. In addition to increasing the cash offer, Cisco has also offered to increase the interest payable on the offer price to a rate of 3.00% from its previous offer of 1.75%. According to a news release by Cisco, “this revised offer represents Cisco’s final price for this transaction.”
A total of more than 30% of shareholders have pre-accepted this offer based on the new price. These, combined with the previously announced acceptances, push the total to more than 40% acceptance of the sale. The rest of TANDBERG’s shareholders have until Dec. 1 to make a final decision.
Like many others in the AV industry, we’ll be watching from the sidelines, waiting for the birdie to fall.
To read Cisco’s full release, click here.
The video industry received another jolt today with the announcement that LifeSize® is being acquired by Logitech®. The interesting thing about this move is that Logitech is traditionally viewed as a consumer products provider, issuing a clear indication that many in the business world feel video communications is nearing the tipping point for wide-scale adoption. LifeSize recently announced it added connectivity to Skype , which is a clear tie into the low-end consumer market. It isn’t too far reaching to see Logitech try to expand its offerings, moving upstream into the SMB space to provide consumers and businesses with a natural progression from low-end, low quality PC-based video to a full line of LifeSize products. Stay tuned, Polycom is the lone independent player in the space , it will be interesting to see for how long. >
And then there were two. Today’s news about Cisco’s acquisition of TANDBERG should come as no surprise to those familiar with the video communications industry. Cisco’s leap into the video space with the launch of its Telepresence platform a few years ago was a clear statement that video communications was the target of future growth for Cisco. However, it was clear that while Cisco introduced a competitive high-end system, they lacked a full range of products to compete effectively against Polycom and TANDBERG . This acquisition effectively leaves two major players who make up approximately 90% of the market with a handful of others making up the rest.
TAMPA, FL, June 23, 2009 – Leading audio and video communications provider AVI-SPL was recently named “Integrator of the Year” by Polycom, Inc. (NASDAQ: PLCM), the global leader in telepresence, video and voice communications solutions. Announced last week during the Infocomm 2009 conference and expo in Orlando, Fla., Polycom’s award recognizes AVI-SPL for outstanding customer service, highlighting the company’s ability to create innovative solutions that support the unique needs of a diverse range of markets, including the corporate, education and government sectors.