Ricoh teams with Vidyo for portable videoconferencing offering

Videoconferencing has become such a hot space that there seems to be a new product (or two or three...) announced every week.

This week's entry to the space continues the focus on compact and portable systems that are easy to use and deploy.

Office equipment maker Ricoh has partnered with videoconferencing specialist Vidyo on a compact videoconferencing system, the Richo Unified Communications System P3000; the system delivers HD multipoint videoconferencing on a portable unit, allowing the user to share documents, photos and videos.

The 3.5-pound unit features a built-in camera, mic and speaker, and includes wired and wireless LAN ports. The system is Ricoh's first partnership with Vidyo, and its first step into the UC market. In addition, the device can be started within 30 seconds.

The company is expected to release the device to market this month but has not yet released any pricing information.

"Our partnership with Vidyo has allowed us to quickly bring to market an entirely innovative, advanced approach to video conferencing and collaboration," said Hidefumi Nakamura, GM of the UCS Business Department for Ricoh. "With Vidyo's platform, based on their patented H.264 scalable video coding architecture, we were able to use Vidyo's APIs and dramatically decrease the time to market."

For more:
- see this release

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