Acoustic specialist Woodtai

calls from the office desk to the car or home office without taking off the headset. Using the latest motion sensor technology, the headset adapts volume to fit the changing sound environment and allows the user to move from the office to the open road in one smooth transition, connecting and transferring calls from all phones to Jabra MOTION™ Office. It is a high-end solution launched to address the Mobile and Unified Communications (UC) market where the current installed base of traditional desk phones need to be supported.

Holger Reisinger, GN Netcom vice-president of Marketing, Products and Alliances, says: “The main objective with the Jabra MOTION Office has been to let knowledge workers and team members in remote areas gain the full benefits from their mobile devices and collaboration technologies. The Jabra MOTION Office is the headset which bridges the gap between the users and the promise of productivity and innovation, allowing free flow of information.” Unified communication

Another area of continued success for GN Netcom is Unified Communication. Today office communication takes place via different devices and media types. These include telephone land lines, mobile phones, video conferencing, email and soft phones – and employees can feel stressed and overwhelmed trying to juggle all the different channels and still work effectively.

Unified Communication brings together all these devices and interfaces into one single integrated application. It makes it easier for people to connect, communicate and work together. The result is more productive employees and smoother interactions. This is another big growth area for GN Netcom and will continue to be so. It also sees the convergence of professional and mobile products, as people increasingly work in different places.

Looking ahead, there is still a great deal of scope for development in GN Netcom’s existing markets: According to a company spokesperson: “I think the overall shape of the company will remain the same in the coming years but hopefully we will have gained a bigger market share with our new products. We are still focused very much on our professional users, developing wireless products for call centres, but I do believe expansion over the next years will come in these areas of sport and music for the consumer market. And Unified Communication for the office market.” n

China’s Woodtai Enterprises, a specialist in acoustic technology, has seen business growth of 12 per cent a year for the past three years. And while there’s every reason for optimism looking forward, the market is not without its challenges. Felicity Landon reports.

ACOUSTIC SPECIALIST

Woodtai’s business is very specialist. This isn’t a company that churns out mass produced electronic components day after day – instead, Woodtai focuses on high-spec products developed in-house and in partnership with its customers. The model is very much high-mix, low-volume, and managing director Thomas Ip doesn’t see that changing.

“We have a very customer-oriented strategy. Our business is not about turning out millions of 27 mm speakers with very thin margins – it’s about custom-made products with shorter lifecycles,” he says. “Of course that means we have a higher selling price – but we still have to think about stepping up productivity, and about absorbing higher labour and other costs without passing these on to the customer.”

Woodtai develops and produces mini speaker devices, earphones and headphones, acoustic components for hearing aids – including earphones, conductors, sound tubes and filters – and other components for hearing aids, such as telecoil and cables.

Founded in 1981 in Hong Kong, the company is still headquartered there, with a team of eight in management, admin, finance,