Transcripts

"Tech Talk"-Giving Your Business The High Tech Edge

SUSIE GHARIB: In tonight's tech talk segment, ringing up sales, ramping up your fashion sense when it comes to your cell phone and reaching out to others at your next big business meeting. With an explanation of what all that entails, here's our technology maven Scott Gurvey.

SCOTT GURVEY, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: The numbers on personal computer sales are in and they are not good for Dell. Hewlett- Packard expanded its lead over Dell in the fourth quarter with 17.4 percent of global PC shipments. China's Lenovo was third.

South Korea's LG Electronics said today it will ship a cell phone co- branded with the Italian fashion house Prada next month. The phone is buttonless and has a touch screen and if that sounds familiar, it does resemble the Apple iPhone, announced with great fanfare last week. IPhone ships in June. The LG Prada phone was actually announced in December.

Apple has some trouble claiming a first for the iPhone brand as well. IPhone was trademarked years ago by a company now part of Cisco Systems. Cisco is not commenting on its trademark dispute with Apple but is eager to show off its wonderful tele-presence meeting system. It's hard to do justice to this on conventional television, but Cisco's tele-presence is to other teleconferencing systems what a Mercedes is to a Model T. Tele- presence works as an integral part of an enterprise's video and data network system. And with high definition video and surround sound, these specially designed rooms display life sized images and real time audio.

RICK MORAN, VP MARKETING, EMERGING TECH., CISCO SYSTEMS: After about 10 minutes people just settle into the fact that you're at a meeting at an oval table. The fact that the distance between the two halves of the table is significant is irrelevant. And you'd be amazed. People get into arguments across the table. You know they actually get into a real discussion as if literally there was only a piece of glass between us instead of ...

PHILIP GRAHAM, SR. DIR. OF ENG., TELEPRESENCE UNIT, CISCO SYSTEMS: Or even humor, transcends the technology which with old video conferencing technology it really didn't.

GURVEY: Amortized over three years, a tele-presence room costs $10,000 to $12,000 per month, not much compared to real travel expenses even without considering the value of time lost to travel.

MARTHIN DEBEER, SR. VP, EMERGING TECH. GROUP, CISCO SYSTEM: Bringing multiple cities together around a virtual table to have one meeting is another capability that we will enable and of course that is not really something you can do with travel. This takes it one step beyond that, being able to get on a plane and go something. You can only be in one place at a one time.

GURVEY: Cisco made its tele-presence rooms available to employees during the holidays, so they could visit with family members at other Cisco sites around the world. Scott Gurvey, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT, New York.