8x8 Upgrades Tango Video Adapter, Adds Distribution

By Staff On Nov 19 2007 - 8:00am

8x8 said earlier this month that its Virtual Office small-business phone system and Tango video-terminal adapter will be carried in CompUSA stores, beginning this month.

Virtual Office will retail for $79.99 (after $50 mail-in rebate) per extension. The hosted iPBX is in use in more than 9,000 small-to-medium businesses in the United States, according to 8x8. It is also selling through Office Depot.

The Packet8 Tango VTA will retail for $99.99 after a $100 mail-in rebate.

Introduced at International CES, the Tango combines a VoIP phone adapter with a built-in 5-inch, VGA-resolution LCD screen to offer video telephony to Packet8 subscribers. The company also said this month that it would program the Tango to display digital still images when not in use for video calling.

A firmware upgrade will let consumers load up to 16 JPEG images onto the device through a Web browser. The upgrade also lets existing Tango owners import Microsoft Outlook contacts (or other CSV format contacts) into the unit's phonebook.

8x8 also announced that it had posted a net loss of $2.6 million for its second quarter, ending Sept. 30.

Revenues for the second quarter of fiscal 2008 increased to $14.8 million vs. $13.2 in the year-ago quarter. The firm's Virtual Office small business telephony product accounted for 47 percent of total revenues, the company said. 8x8 added roughly 1,000 new companies to its Virtual Office network over the second quarter, bringing the total number of Virtual Office subs to over 9,000.

The company also said it had snatched up approximately 25,000 former SunRocket subscribers during the quarter, which had a negative impact on the firm's profit margins thanks to the incentives it had offered former SunRocket customers.