Cisco owned Wireless group Linksys is set to get aggressive in a major push to dominate the VOIP market while grabbing more share of the home and SMB market through new reseller deals.
Linksys are getting aggressive. During a visit to Australia Senior Vice President Victor Tsao said that the company intends to dominate in the fast growing VOIP market while carving out further share of the lifestyle and SMB technology markets. Today the company announced deals with Powerhouse and Engin in the VOIP market.
Linksys opened its Australian doors well over a year ago, but despite being the leading brand in the United States with over 50% market share they found themselves largely frozen out of the domestic market. Harvey Norman turned down the opportunity to carry the gear and the only major partner Linksys could find was Coles Myer subsidiary, Harris Technology.
SHR understands Harris has done reasonably well with the gear, but the lack of a major mass retail partner and the departure of Brian Allsop as country manager for Linksys caused problems. It took a little while, but Linksys eventually replaced him with Graeme Reardon which it poached away from his role as National Sales Manager for D-Link.
It’s taken Reardon nearly six months to deliver on the latest deal, an agreement with Woolworth’s division Dick Smith Electronics.
Said Tsao”It has taken us a while but we are now up and running with a powerful range of products for the lifestyle technology and SMB markets. We have a UN equaled depth of expertise in these markets and I am confident that we will grow market share by the sheer depth and range of products that we are able to deliver over our competitors. One are where I am confident that we will be #1 is in the home and SMB office VOIP markets. We have the technology and we are now building the relationships to deliver the products to market”
The entry into the seventeen Dick Smith PowerHouse stores came about through an agreement with Ingram Micro. If all goes well the plan is to take the stock into the 164 Dick Smith Electronics stores nationally by end of the year.
“This is a very special day for Linksys,” said Graeme Reardon, Linksys regional manager for Australia and New Zealand.
In a banner day for Linksys the company has also announced a co-branding deal with VoIP provider Engin. The deal will see engin reselling Linksys routers equipped with phone ports and Quality of Service (QoS) features.
Targeting the SOHO and SMB markets and priced from $219 the new routers will ultimately be made available to engin’s authorised retailers, resellers and wholesale channel partners.
The deal comes about as the result of Cisco’s acquisition of Sipura Technology in April. Engin’s customers were using Sipura Technology’s SPA-2000 products.