New IP Phone Models?

[j.burwell]

For anyone that made it to Cisco Live, just curious if there was any discussion about new hardware releases for replacements of the 8800 Series phones. I think they have been out for 10 years so seems logical a new set would be introduced, even if it was multiplatform. Surely there is still a market for hardphones? Thanks

[Leo Laohoo]

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@j.burwell wrote:
Surely there is still a market for hardphones?

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Yes, there is but the market is shrinking.  

[Jonathan Schulenberg]

The only new collab endpoint announced at CLUS this year was the Cisco Room Bar Pro. The next event will be Webex One in October, FWIW.

You’re correct about the vintage of the 7800/8800 series. Everything forward-looking is covered by NDA though so we can’t discuss it here. Ask your Cisco AM if there is any news to share under a confidentiality agreement. This can be tricky though because Cisco has a duty to their shareholders not to tank near-term revenue from a current model by telling people a replacement is coming. This is why the Bar Pro was so closely guarded; Cisco sellers and partners were told less than a month before public launch.

And to Leo’s point about a shrinking product category: that is why Cisco got into the headset business. I asked a few other OEMs that make hardware for the MSFT ecosystem what they were seeing for desk phone uptake rate. They claimed 55-60% for “real” deployments (ie not IT nerds or limited POCs). That’s much higher than I anticipated but lots of end users still want a dial pad and handset.

[j.burwell]

Thanks, that's totally understandable. At the same time, trying to be a good steward of my company's resources, I would not want to buy 1200 replacement phones of the same model we have now and 6 months later find out a new model was introduced. Although our 8851 phones are working fine for the most part, they are beginning to age with physical wear and will need replacement sooner than later. Seems like a very long time before a new model, the 9900 series was out in less than 10 years after the 7900 series even though short lived and a "bridge model" to the 8800. We are still very attached to hard phones here. Softphones are fine for some applications but people don't like all office communication to be mostly dependent on a PC.