Cisco adds a touch of colour to its VoIP phones

Hoping to provide some breathing space between itself and its competitors, Cisco plans to unveil the first-ever VoIP telephone with a colour and touch screen.

Marketing Director Hank Lambert said the new features are meant to make Voice over internet phones much easier to use. The groundbreaking features will for now only be found on Cisco's 7970G, which costs $1,000 in the US. But colour and touch screens are poised to become a regular feature in Cisco's VoIP telephone line-up if prices of the raw materials ever drop, he said.

Lambert said: "As the technology evolves over time, we'll try and drive popular technologies into other Cisco products."

Cisco is adding new features just as major competitors are beginning to finally chip away at the company's four-year-long dominance of the VoIP market. While Cisco has sold two million VoIP handsets, more than its competitors combined, it's beginning to show weakness in sales of other VoIP hardware. A recent survey by InfoTech Research concludes Avaya overtook Cisco as the number one worldwide supplier of a key piece of VoIP phone network equipment for businesses.

At risk for Cisco is its dominance of an equipment market expected to mushroom to $15bn in the next three years, according to research company Synergy Research Group. After years of overpromising and under-delivering, VoIP providers are generating renewed interest among consumers, thanks to sharp growth in broadband connections to the home, improvements in quality of service, and hook-ups that allow VoIP calls over ordinary telephone handsets rather than clunky PC microphone systems.

VoIP services for now typically promise a smaller phone bill, virtually wiping out charges for long-distance and international calls.

In addition, connecting phone calls over the internet could eventually open the door to advanced communications services that tie voice together with email, instant messaging and videoconferencing - something that Microsoft and others are already working to achieve.

Ben Charny writes for News.com