Mixed Results For Conferencing VendorsMixed Results For Conferencing Vendors

Quarterly results from the world of conferencing technologies yielded a mixed bag as WebEx Communications Inc. continues to be the big winner while others are seeing revenue erode.

WebEx continued its brisk growth, reporting Thursday that second-quarter revenue was up 35% from a year ago, while profits more than doubled. For the quarter ended June 30, the provider of Web-conferencing services reported a profit of $7.9 million on revenue of $44.9 million, compared with a profit of $3.3 million on revenue of $33.2 million a year earlier.

Meanwhile, competitor Latitude Communications, which sells in-house conferencing technology and outsourced conferencing services, posted shrinking revenue and growing losses amid increasing competition in the conferencing sector. For the quarter ended June 30, Latitude reported a loss of $1.7 million on revenue of $8.3 million, compared with a loss of $1.2 million on revenue of $10.0 million in the year-ago quarter. Sales of on-premise products were down to just under $2 million from $3.5 million last year, while service revenue dropped slightly, to $6.4 million from $6.5 million a year earlier.

Elsewhere, video- and voice-conferencing equipment maker Polycom also reported sharply declining results just a few weeks after it unveiled a desktop conferencing dashboard designed to give users easy access to integrated data-, Web- and voice conferencing capabilities. For the quarter ended June 30, Polycom reported a profit of $1.6 million on revenue of $99.4 million, compared with a profit of $5.6 million on revenue of $122.2 million a year earlier.