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Wireless "will play big part in Plantronics future"

It's only the 3rd quarter financial results, not normally exciting ... but the phone and headset maker Plantronics has produced amazingly good figures - and they include, for the first time, a substantial climb in wireless devices.

Thre are a lot of wireless headsets coming onto the market, but the Plantronics brand wasn't expected to be amongst the market leaders. Surprisingly, it has been very enthusiastically received, and is now contributing to a financial resurgence by the company.

Here's the official spin: Ken Kannappan, President and Chief Executive Officer, issued a statement saying: "Our results were in line with the guidance we issued on July 16, which called for revenues of $80 to $84 million, and earnings per share of $0.23 to $0.26, inclusive of the anticipated tax reserve release. The sequential revenue growth came from our mobile, computer, Walker and Ameriphone product lines offset by a slight decline in our call centre and office products business, all fundamentally in line with our earlier expectations."

Then, significantly, he added: "In addition to our continued solid financial performance, the reception that our M1000 Bluetooth headset received in Europe last quarter was encouraging."

It has been a long battle to persuade people that they don't have to hold a phone receiver in their hand. They switched from pens to qwerty keyboards more eagerly; the stigma of "looking like a secretary" faded in a decade. But it seems that "looking like a call centre operative" is a worse stigma.

But the call centre revenue has been falling, at Plantronics, and it looks as if, at last, ordinary office use is starting to climb. And interestingly, wireless headsets are starting to be accepted - possibly, because hands-free mobile phones have given the ordinary executive an image of a headset which doesn't look like a switchboard operator.

Both Bluetooth and DECT technologies are showing as important to Plantronics, and Neil Salton, EMEA marketing manager, believes that wireless could account for as much as half the company's product line within a decade - maybe, sooner.

"The majority of our business would be corded phones with headsets; and that would be a significant majority - I can't give figures! but if you guess more than 80% I won't contradict you. But cordless offerings are growing so fat that it's starting to be interesting; and volumes of those are expected to grow very significantly in future," said Salton.

It's an industry secret that Plantronics is planning to innovate, and that new products should be announced in the wireless area next year, probably with previews at the German CeBIT show. Salton wouldn't be drawn on these rumours, but he did say that wireless would form a part of any future plans, and that several key indicators suggested much faster growth than had been expected before.

"One of the drivers we foresee, is the development of good speech-recognition software," said Salton. "As better and better response software appears, the requirement for a good quality clip-on microphone becomes more important; you need one which is at a fixed distance from the face. In the past, people didn't want to have a wire tying them to their desks. With wireless, both DECT and Bluetooth, they can get up and move around. So we see some encouragement for us in those areas."

Best-selling wireless device at the moment is the CA40, which turns an ordinary phone into a cordless headset phone. In offices with digital PBX systems, you can't plug an ordinary phone into the network, of course, so the adapter fits into the handset, and there is even a "lifter" which lets you take the phone off-hook if you aren't at your desk when a call comes in.

In future, that will seem clunky, and Plantronics seems to understand the need to do better. DECT phones that takes headsets are already available, but dual-standard Bluetooth and DECT headsets with belt-mounted dialing units are rare. It's a fair bet that this would be one area Plantronics will look.