MWC: Polycom supports videoconferencing on Samsung Galaxy Tab

BARCELONA: Polycom is working with major OEMs to bring its unified communications (UC) video endpoint technology to tablet devices, confirming that the Samsung Galaxy Tab will be the first device to ship with the technology.

The company said at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona that it has been working with Samsung to put the technology in the Galaxy Tab as a dedicated software offering, rather than merely creating an Android app.

Sudhakar Ramakrishna, senior vice president and general manager for UC products at Polycom, told V3.co.uk that the service will enable business users to carry out videoconferencing on the go.

"The Android Market will only go so far, so we are working with OEMs to really integrate our software within their hardware so that workers can use our videoconferencing wherever they are," he said.

"This all comes under our ethos of UC Everywhere, as we move from premise-based offerings to services that can be accessed anywhere as users can connect into any Polcyom endpoint over 3G, 4G and Wi-Fi networks."

Polcyom expects to start offering the service on the Galaxy Tab by the second quarter of this year, and Ramakrishna said that other Android-tablet devices could follow soon after.

"Once you have one Android integrated application it's not too difficult to add more as the complexity goes down to make it run on other versions of the software," he said.

"We expect a lot of businesses will talk with the OEMs or with their service providers to have a dedicated version of the Galaxy Tab installed with our software that they can then give to their business users."

Ramakrishna explained that IT staff could customise the device to ensure that it has the necessary levels of security to access the corporate network.

He also confirmed that other products, including the iPad, were being looked at, and that Polcyom will work alongside major manufacturers to discuss adding the technology to dedicated device versions.