ViewSonic Sees Growth, Boost From Vista in '07

In an interview with CRN, Matt Milne, ViewSonic's president of Americas, also said a hastened migration to wide-screen display technology is under way, a factor that the company and its channel partners are poised to take advantage of into next year.

"Fifty percent of our monitors shipping in the fourth quarter are with wide-screen technology," Milne said. That, he said, plays into new graphic functionality built into Vista and has ViewSonic believing the value proposition of its products and channel partners will be successful in competing for hardware dollars next year. "It bodes well for when we start to see adoption [of Vista]," Milne said.

The company has spent the better part of 2006 enhancing its line of LCDs, projectors and televisions. That product line, combined with what Milne described as an effort by the company to build efficiencies into its supply chain and product delivery, helped push it into a stronger position in the market.

"We were able to take substantial [market] share in the second quarter, and maintain it in the back end of the year," Milne said. The company has found growth at the same time some competitors decided to exit the commercial display business. Others, such as Dell, have begun to see negative growth in the display arena.

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In its quarter that ended Sept. 30, ViewSonic, Walnut, Calif., turned in revenue of $426.4 million compared with $316 million for the same quarter in 2005. It reported income of $10.6 million for its most recent quarter, compared with income of $1.9 million for the same period a year earlier.

ViewSonic has been working to optimize its product line for Vista, and the company is talking about how it will approach the opportunity with the channel after 2007 begins. "The Vista operating system is all about working more productively and with wide content," said Jeff Volpe, vice president of marketing for Americas at ViewSonic. "You can put more content on the screen using Vista tools."

Among other things, ViewSonic is planning a significant presence at the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where it is expected to preview an aggressive product road map for next year.