posted 13 August 2000 05:23 AM            

The company is in a desperate situation and has no way but to make it anyway in order to come back to the good old days.
The market will give the answer sooner or later to the question.

As a old Japanese book written a thousand years ago, "Life is like a bubble in a river,nothing stays the same.Even once a strong mighty power falls to the ground taken over by the other. It is the way of life."

I think the market competition has moved to the second stage with the downfall of PictureTel's long reign as the king of teleconferencing. If the company can not strike back and beat Polycom, the Polycom's new reign may become stable and long live.
It is because it may create and stablize public perception that Polycom's products are the best and unsurpassed by any other.

But@I have to tell you that there are quite a number of people who are looking forward to having the product introduced in Japan soon.

Anyway, we will find out how it will turn out when PictureTel and Polycom announce their respective quarter sales and revenue results that are comming up. That will tell something to us about this topic.

Keisuke

[This message has been edited by Keisuke Hashimoto (edited 08-16-2000).]

posted 29 August 2000 09:55 PM               

H'mmm ... PCTL closed Friday 25-Aug at $6 13/32, and closed today 29-Aug at $8 5/16 - that's close to a 30% gain in two business days, or, PCTL gained $79M in market cap in two days - very close to the entire $85M current market cap of VTEL !! So PictureTel has gained some running room in a mere two days ...

posted 30 August 2000 11:12 AM               

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The objective of this current agreement is to work toward joint commercialization of a new generation of videoconferencing systems, focusing on demand from the SOHO market which is expected to grow rapidly in the future. This effort will make the most of Sharp's audio/video processing technologies, including CCD cameras and microphone technology, as well as its compact design and manufacturing technologies and mass production methods, combined with PictureTel's videoconferencing technologies which set the standard for the world.

The first step will be to develop and bring to market a videoconferencing system which offers high-quality video and audio, a user-friendly interface, excellent cost/performance value, and a high degree of expandability based on standards developed by the ITU, an international standards setting body. The system will be built on the PictureTel iPowerTM* architecture, a new-generation, high-performance videoconferencing system platform.