Sony UK is planning to deepen relationships with its channel partners next year as it focuses on growing market share across its audiovisual (AV) product categories.

Sony is gearing up for a business drive in 2007 following the amalgamation of its business projectors, business plasmas, videoconferencing (VC), network video monitoring and CCTV product groups into the newly created AV Communications division in October.

Raj Pandya, senior manager of AV Communications at Sony, told CRN: “A lot of next year’s strategy will be focused on growth across all product categories, but we will place particular focus on VC. There will be more demand for desktop VC systems, rather than group systems, and with our TL30 desktop solution we are well placed to take advantage of this.

“We have about a nine per cent share of the UK VC market. We are the number three player behind Tandberg and Polycom. We want to increase our share to 11 per cent.”

Pandya added that Sony is to embark upon a six-month marketing campaign to raise VC awareness.

“The campaign is about getting end-users to think whether it is cost effective to jump on a train to Manchester or drive to Birmingham for a 30-minute meeting when they could do the meeting via VC,” Pandya said.

Sam McMaster, managing director of VC VAR Questmark, said: “We’ve had a direct relationship with Sony since 1994. It is starting to gain significant market share and the marketing campaign it is about to launch is fantastic news. We need to get new users into VC and not keep going after the same VC customers.”

Ian Vickerage, managing director of Sony’s VC distributor Imago, said: “Our relationship with Sony is very close. New customers will be more comfortable buying Sony VC because it is a well-known brand. A lot of people won’t have heard of Polycom or Tandberg.”

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