British Telecommunications Inc may be coy about sales figures for its Relate 2000 analogue videophone (CI No 2,355), but at grassroots level its sales force is less guarded. I do not think they quite took off in the way that BT expected, said an assistant at one of its East London retail outlets, revealing that the shop had sold fewer than a dozen in the last 18 months. The story was hardly different in London’s West End, where an assistant admitted that very few had been sold. While declining to discuss sales figures, claiming they were commercially sensitive, British Telecom has tacitly acknowledged its over-estimation of consumer demand. The official company line is now that the analogue videophone was never meant to be a volume market. Yet a year ago, a spokesman said that the GEC Marconi Ltd-derived videophone was selling around 10,000 units and aimed at the mass market (CI No 2328). The shortcomings of consumer videophones are price, British Telecom’s costs #400, and picture qual ity. BT’s offers a somewhat jerky and small picture. Claire O’ Malley, a psychologist at the Centre for Research in Development, Instruction & Training at Nottingham University, suggests that the company should abandon colour videophone screens until the technology improves. The most important information… is about the timing of gestures and whether someone is looking at you. You can convey that just as well in black and white, which you can send very fast with good definition, she said. Similarly, analysts are downbeat. Diane Trivett, an analyst at Dataquest said Two years ago, European manufacturers were optimistic, but when I surveyed the same companies six months ago, the optimism had gone, and two, including Philips, had withdrawn compl etely.
