Polycom Inc of San Jose, California, which trades under the name of Polyspan Teleconferencing BV in Europe and develops, manufactures and markets audio conferencing products, estimates it has 65% of the US market for telephone conferencing with its SoundStation product. The company says the equipment is sold both directly and indirectly by distributors and dealers throughout the world, and is privately labeled by companies such as British Telecommunications Plc in the UK and Koninklijke PTT Nederland NV in the Netherlands. Polycom launched ShowStation, a document conferencing system, in the US towards the end of 1995, and plans to launch it in Europe this month. The system works much like an overhead projector, linked by a standard telephone line to enable users to view and annotate documents and data files in real time. Computer-based presentations and files can be shared by connecting a personal computer to an auxilliary port on the ShowStation. A complete unit retails for about 10,000 British pounds- according to Reid, a cheap alternative to its video rival. It is the first system to be designed to the new T.120 document conferencing standard. The company hopes this, combined with a high 1,024 by 768 camera resolution, will be enough of a head start to keep the ShowStation one step ahead of any contenders. The kit will be distributed in much the same way as its audio conferencing system, and Polycom has already managed to sign up Danvers, Massachusetts videoconferencing major PictureTel Corp to put its own name on the system.
