Jabra added video, Logitech added headsets, Sennheiser added video bars. Is every brand turning into the same brand?

Put a Jabra PanaCast, a Logitech Rally Bar, a Poly Studio and a Sennheiser TeamConnect Bar on one table and ask a customer which one comes from an audio company. A few years ago that was an easy game. Today it is a trick question, and I get asked about it in the middle of tenders: “Why is the headset company selling me a camera, and why is the camera company selling me a headset?” It is a fair question, so I went and looked at how each brand got here, and who is moving in which direction.

Which audio brands moved into video?

Jabra is the cleanest example. GN Audio announced in February 2019 that it would buy Altia Systems, the company behind PanaCast, for up to 125 million US dollars. GN said it wanted to go from audio-only into integrated audio and video, and the PanaCast became Jabra’s first real video conferencing device. I covered the background in my post Who is Jabra. Poly got there by merger instead: Plantronics bought Polycom in 2018 for around 2 billion dollars, a headset maker joining a conferencing company that had been selling video since 1998, and HP later bought the combined company. I told that story in the HP Poly post. The newest name on this side is Sennheiser. In 2025 it started shipping its first video bars, the TeamConnect Bar S and M, with 4K cameras, four beamforming microphones and twin speakers, and it says it built them on its conferencing audio know-how.

Which video brands moved into audio?

Logitech is the mirror image. Its enterprise reputation was built on cameras like Rally and Brio and on room systems, and I wrote about that history in the Logitech post. Logitech has made headsets for years, so I would not say it was ever absent from audio, but business audio was never the centre of the story. It bought Blue Microphones in 2018 for about 117 million dollars, and its Zone line has grown into a serious business range. The latest step came on 30 September 2026, when Logitech announced the Zone Vibe Pro and Zone Vibe Pro for Business: a boomless headset with an AI noise-reducing microphone, certified for Microsoft Teams open office, Zoom and Google Meet, managed through Logitech Sync, at 259.99 to 279.99 US dollars. That is the same boomless, AI-microphone idea Jabra pushed with the Evolve3 and then spread across all five Evolve3 models. Yealink is moving the same way from a different starting point. It started in IP phones and now sells headsets, video bars and room systems under one roof, which is why I see its name in more and more tenders. I looked at the brand in my Yealink post.

Why is everyone converging?

Here is my read, and it is an opinion, not something any of these companies said to me. The first reason is the room. A meeting room needs a camera, a microphone, a speaker and a screen to behave as one system, and the vendor that supplies all of them, down to the scheduling panel on the door, can sell the whole room and carry one support contract. The second is Microsoft and Zoom certification. Certifying a full room device is more valuable than certifying a single peripheral, and the platforms keep pushing toward complete, managed devices, as I explained in the MDEP post. The third is margin. A headset is a product a buyer can swap in minutes, while a room system is a product a buyer lives with for years. The fourth is the Chinese price pressure. When a brand like Yealink can offer phone, headset and video bar from one catalogue at a lower price, the Western brands have a hard time defending a single category.

Is a brand that does everything good for the buyer?

Sometimes yes. One vendor for the whole room means one management tool, one warranty conversation and devices that were tested together. The Jabra SpeakerMic is a good example of what a single vendor can do. I looked at it in the SpeakerMic post, where the camera, the microphones and the speaker are designed to extend each other.

The risk is the “box ticked” product. A brand can add a category because the roadmap needs it and not because it has a real edge there, and the buyer ends up with a good camera paired with an average speaker, or the other way around. That is the question I ask every time a brand enters a new category: what do they know about this product that the specialists do not? Sennheiser can answer that for microphones and beamforming. Jabra can answer it for the way people actually use a headset all day. A brand that cannot answer it is probably adding the product to complete a catalogue.

What should you do about it?

Judge each product in the category it entered, not by the brand’s history. A great headset maker does not automatically make a great video bar, and the reverse is true as well. Ask for a test unit, and put it in the room with the real noise and the real laptops. If you are buying a full room from one brand, ask what happens if you need to replace just one piece, such as the camera, with another brand’s product. And when a customer asks why everyone is doing this, the short answer I give is that the room is where the money is, and every brand wants to be the one selling the whole room. If you want a second opinion before you commit a room to one brand, our consultation page is a good place to start.

Sources

1. GN: GN Audio to acquire Altia Systems (February 2019)
2. Inavate: GN Audio acquires Altia Systems for USD 125 million
3. HP: the history and evolution of Poly
4. Forbes: Sennheiser ships its first video bars
5. Sennheiser: TeamConnect Bars now available
6. Engadget: Blue Microphones sells to Logitech for 117 million dollars
7. Forbes: Logitech unveils the Zone Vibe Pro
8. Yealink: product range
9. UCC Technologia: Who is Jabra?
10. UCC Technologia: HP Poly, is it Poly or HP?
11. UCC Technologia: Logitech legacy
12. UCC Technologia: the Jabra PanaCast SpeakerMic