Philips Telecom, the division created by Philips Electronics NV last year, has expanded the Sopho range of key systems and PABXs to cover the small business market. Managing director of Philips Telecom UK, Stuart Hallam says Philips delayed bringing small digital systems to market, until the market and the price was right. The new range, which covers 50 extensions and below was developed at Philips in Airdrie, Scotland, and is designed exclusively for the European market. Although he acknowledges North America as the biggest market for PABX systems, Hallam’s philosophy is that we should go in the opposite direction to the players at the small and medium end, who make products for North America and then adapt them for the European market. Hallam also reckons that in a couple of years Eastern and Western Europe together will almost equal North America for potential revenues. There are three new products, the Sopho-15, Sopho-25 and Sopho-35 and they handle up to 20, 36 and 50 digital extensions respectively. Philips says that different configurations can accomodate a variety of functions, including automatic call distribution. Other features include Mercury compatibility and 2B+D signals to each extension, enabling speech and data connection to devices. Although each system comes configured as a key system, they can be reconfigured to operate as PABXs. Philips currently has 10m switching customers in Europe, although it comes a distant third behind Alcatel NV and Siemens AG, the European market leaders in switching. But Hallam is confident that a research and development budget of UKP20m will help to push up its market share and he makes that point, Alcatel have got to that size through acquisition, they have not developed any embryonic products. So far, Philips has sold UKP4m worth of systems to dealers – a fact that Hallam sees as a good omen, The key to success is distribution and support.
