Cisco and Avaya "stupid" to develop own tablets

Moves by networking vendors Cisco and Avaya to develop their own tablet devices have been labelled a "big mistake" by rival Alcatel Lucent.

At the company's Dynamic Tour 2011 event in Barcelona, Eric Penisson, general manager for enterprise applications, acknowledged that the tablet is an important focus for business, but said that the job of developing new devices for the market should be left to more traditional device manufacturers.

"Tablets will evolve rapidly – but we consider what Avaya and Cisco are doing by developing their own tablets as stupid. It's a big mistake," he said.

Tom Eggermeier, senior vice president and general manager for EMEA at Alcatel Lucent, added: "What we aim to do is provide the same enterprise software, whether it is for desktop PCs or tablets. We'll never be able to compete with the likes of Apple if we decide to develop our own tablet devices."

And Nicolas de Kouchkovsky, chief marketing officer at the firm, agreed with those sentiments.

"Our philosophy is to embrace innovation, but we don't think that us or any other networking company will be able to innovate at the speed of tablet vendors," he said.

Cisco has launched its own Cius tablet device and rival Avaya introduced its Flare device last year.