We caught this story last month, where Cisco the giant was trying to muscle the Tandberg shareholders into accepting a deal that man analysts thought was largely benefitting Cisco.
Some of the shareholders decided they didn’t want to sell for what Cisco was offering, so Cisco announced that they were going to pull their bid altogether. The two sides were not interested in budging from their relative positions.
Well today, Cisco blinked.
The initial offering of $3 billion wasn’t accepted by enough shareholders, but today Cisco announced that they were going to up their bid to $3.41 billion – providing it’s accepted before December 1. If they can’t get to a deal at that point, Cisco says they are going to explore alternate options. Again.
Cisco has been heavily promoting their brand as of late. In the summer blockbusters Transformers 2 and GI Joe, the product placement for Cisco was crystal clear. Recent TV commercials have demonstrated the benefits of teleconferencing through semi-famous actors in settings that exhibit the Cisco experience.
It looks like Cisco is hoping to take a bite out of the travel budgets of large companies by providing them with a “Telepresence” – useful and productive teleconferencing software.
With the amount of leverage Cisco is using on Tandberg, is the Tandberg technology an essential component of the Rosetta Stone that Cisco is creating?
Written by: Jason Finnerty. www.digitcom.ca. Follow TheTelecomBlog.com by: RSS, Twitter, Identi.ca, or Friendfeed
