Strategic Direction Change in Panasonic Business Communication Category

[CMUK]

Absolutely gutted, Panasonic closing it's Comms side in the next 2 years,

Dear Partner,

I am writing to inform you of a strategic decision Panasonic headquarter has made, which is to regrettably close the Panasonic Business Communication business (PBX, SIP, and Scanner categories) in a time frame of two years from today’s announcement.
In recent years Panasonic has worked hard to find a way to continue the business by making our organization and its relationships with partners as sustainable as possible. However, it has become apparent that this is not possible to continue given the current business environment based on the limited capability of factory resources as described below.
• A sharp decline of the market and rapid shift to cloud-based solutions.
• Technological mismatch between factory resources/assets and future market needs and trends.
• Lagging behind our competitor’s R&D activities.
• A constant financial deficit due to the reasons above.
• Shift to new types of demand (Teams, Zoom, etc.) significantly accelerated by Covid-19 which makes the future of our business untenable and unpredictable.
It is with great sorrow that we close our business, especially one that has decades of history and trust.
Panasonic team will be in touch with your distributors to discuss and study supply scheme going forward and we will be at your disposal to clarify any of the aspect of this decision.

Sincerely yours,

Carlos Osuna

Head of Business Communication Business Unit




Calum M
ACSS

 

[telephoneguy20]

I know, this is so sad to see happening. I've been programming Panasonic systems for 15 years...
Any suggestions or opinions on a similar platform? looking at PBX and Hosted in Canada.

 

[CMUK]

We are an Avaya/Panasonic/Unify house, unfortunately there isn't much choice....I have tried IPECS in the past and didn't like it.
We still have Avaya and Unify for on prem PBX with digital extensions however we are going to try 3CX for a while I think.

Unfortunately not many on-prem manufactures around anymore, I wouldn't want to try and sell something like NEC etc incase they do the same in a few years!
Pure IP seems the way to go which sucks, as in the UK so many buildings lack Cat5e cabling.

Calum M
ACSS

 

[omonat]

Five years ago i saw this coming when the likes of Eriksson, Alcatel e.t.c started to leave.
Been doing Panasonic and when i noticed this trend, i started looking at opensource based solutions. Fortunately there are vendors whole solutions are based on opensource. Panasonic's KX-HTS32 was based on opensource asterisk i think.

Having noticed the trend, i started doing Panasonic + Yeastar.
Yeastar works quite well though i am still skeptical about the hardware quality but the software looks good.

Wanet Telecoms Limited

 

[CMUK]

Ericson do the IPECS system along with LG, that seems to be doing fairly well at least in my area, I do not really like it however.

Yeastar have been trying to get us to look at their system however i am quite sold on 3cx

Calum M
ACSS

 

[kizo]

Panasonic was the leading manufacturer of VCRs so they left, as did FAX devices.
The needs of the market are constantly changing and this COVID has accelerated everything.
Panasonic engineers always work with a plan and a reason, always monitoring and anticipating market needs.
They may know how we will make phone calls after 2022 year
According to the last plan, we are sure of two years for PBX installation plus five years of maintenance and programming.
I have over 25 years of experience with Panasonic PBX and I am at the age when I can't learn new ones.
When Panasonic 2029 shuts down I retire.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/pana...-technology-activity-6736563972025155584-0kWV

There are no stupid questions, there are only stupid answers!

 

[CMUK]

Yes very true, I don't think any of my sales team will be selling any more NS700's however....

I have done Panasonic systems since I left school, roughly 10 years ago, I'm 26 now, god knows what we will be doing when I am retirment age.

Calum M
ACSS

 

[kizo]

When you retire you might install "Beam me up" machines, this is planned for the end of the century

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KyUQCqjcEU

There are no stupid questions, there are only stupid answers!

 

[OzzieGeorge]

Hi

I'm an interloper from the NEC forum but I have worked on Panasonic in the past. These are sad times indeed as the Panasonic was my second favorite system to work on. It has been suggested by CMUK that NEC may go the same way and I fear he may be right. We are an NEC distributor in OZ and we used to sell 2 to 3 systems a week, we saw the writing on the wall and started also selling 3CX early last year. Our sales of NEC have dwindled to about 1 a month and over the last year we sold about 60 3CX. Add to that the fact that in a personal discussion with one of NEC's TAC techs, he told me that they had been advised to learn other systems if possible as they may diversify to offer a support function for other suppliers! Not a good sign.