By Matthew Henry

SYDNEY: French IT brand, Thomson Telecom, used the CeBIT show in Sydney today for the worldwide launch of its new company branding, which includes a new red Thomson logo and the marketing tagline ‘Images & Beyond’.

The new branding will be officially launched in France tomorrow and has been designed to reinforce the evolving nature of Thomson’s business from a telecommunications hardware manufacturer to an IT and content solutions provider.

Thomson supplies Telstra and Thomson branded phones to the Australian market, but the company also owns film imaging company, Technicolour, and television broadcast equipment and solutions provider, Grass Valley.

“Not many people know that Thomson is also an imaging company, and now that we are looking at all these new home gateway products our future is also in video and services,” said Thomson Telecom national sales and marketing manager, Brett Watts.

According to Watts, the change will not cause any major changes to Thomson’s Australian operation, which will gradually roll out new packaging and point of sale material over the coming months.

“It is going to be a soft launch. It costs a lot of money to put out a new image just like that so we will take it gradually. Products with the existing logo will not change but new products from now on will be launched the new logo,” said Watts.

Thomson also showcased its latest telecommunications products at CeBIT, particularly its triple-play home gateway products and a new quadruple-play gateway, which enables users to reroute their mobile phone calls through the gateway to save on phone bills.

The home gateway products are not available in Australia yet, but Watts believes it is only a matter of time before telecommunications companies start providing video download services to support the products.

“Our vision is to have the gateway at the centre of the home network, not the PC,” Watts said.