With Apple’s App Store success (over 500 million downloaded apps so far), similar stores are sprouting up all around, with Microsoft, Palm, RIM, Google and others introducing their own version of an application store.
Still, the iPhone is making most of the noise and as such, the blogosphere in the past several months was filled with posts about different VoIP clients being ported to the iPhone – jail-broken or not. BUT – do we really want (or need) VoIP clients in our App Stores?
I’m not saying VoIP is dead, heaven forbid. I’m just asking:
Should VoIP Clients be downloaded to mobile phones?
I’d say no.
Luca Fligheddu, an avid Blackberry user, has been trying several different clients for a while – on different phones with some working better than others. Twitter, for instance, is already filled with users who tweet their hearts out from their phone – on the way to the airport, from the pub or from parties. As fun as that may be, it’s a niche – suitable for a very small portion of the population.
Alec Saunders makes a very strong argument about people wanting mobility a lot more than audio quality in their calls:
This, of course, is the crux of the matter. Aside from a small number of enthusiasts, most consumers would quite happily accept old technology. In fact, unless told, they would probably never notice the difference.
In my world, I don’t see consumers clamoring for high definition audio and video. I see them clamoring for mobility with all of its attendant audio quality problems.
This then got me to the question above, and its answer – People today want and need phones in order to make calls. They want that specific functionality “out of the box”. They definitely don’t want to search for an application that will let them do what phones were originally designed for, making phone calls.
I’m with those people – it’s a mobile phone. Mobile, but still a phone. Something you make calls with. Why should a layman go to an online app store and download and install Truphone, Fring, Skype or any other VoIP client out there? Cheaper (or even free) calls is a good incentive – especially with the current state of the economy, but do you really believe that your average neighbor is going to go to his app store from the phone to download such a client?
If you’re a road warrior, with a lot of technical knowledge and experience (or one with a good friend who is willing to be a personal IT technician) then be my guest, but most people don’t want to manage their phones, they simply want to use them.
The only good solution would be an incorporation of the VoIP client (by either developing one or acquiring someone who has such a client) by the mobile handset vendors AND having the mobile operators actually embracing them.
Tags: Alec Saunders, App Store, downloadable client, Fring, High definition, iPhone, Luca Filigheddu, Microsoft, Mobile, mobile operators, mobility, Palm, quality, RIM, Skype, Truphone, VoIP, VoIP client
Comments and trackbacks
1. Jeb Brilliant | January 27th, 2009 at 4:38 am
Tsahi,
I’m new to your blog but really like this post. I tend to disagree in that I think the average Joe that owns an iPhone is willing and able to download a mobile VOIP application. I think with the state of the economy the average person is going to be trying to save money any way they can.
I only know one person that isn’t willing and wanting to download new apps to their iPhone, everyone else I know (and most of them are not extremely tech savvy) download all kinds of apps. They may need the suggestion from others to know about an app to download but they don’t hesitate to download it.
I’m with you in that I like that out of box experience. When I buy a car I don’t want to soup it up. When I bought phones back in the day when changing face plates was the in thing, I never participated. If it’s not good enough out of the box then why buy it?
That being said, I think phones are like computers in that adding software adds value and use to it.
Anyways, that’s just my 2 cents.
2. Tsahi Levent-Levi | January 27th, 2009 at 4:47 am
Hi there Jeb, and welcome to my blog – hope you’ll like it.
Thanks for your inputs, I think the answer for that will be known in a while from now.
Note that in order to use a VoIP Client, the user will need to download the client, create an account and learn how to use the client and when it will actually work for him and save money for him – not that easy a task.
Another thing is the fact that the iPhone is not that popular yet – it sold over 10M units, but that’s still less than 2% of the market. Nokia has VoIP practically built into their handsets (although it is buried in their phone for those wishing to use it), and for this one I know of a single person who actually uses it regularly.
I guess only time will tell.
Regards,
Tsahi
3. Jeb Brilliant | January 27th, 2009 at 5:29 am
Tsahi,
You are absolutely right, only time will tell. Here in the US it is much more common to see an iPhone then a Nokia N or E Series handset. I just today interviewed the CEO or DeFi Mobile a mobile VOIP provider who explained to me that they have really simplified the download and activation process and from my past experience with others like Truphone even on a Nokia it can be pretty painless. On top of that both services have integrated with Nokia so well you may not know you’re making a VOIP call versus a GSM call and on the iPhone I have read that both have made their client look very similar to the iPhone when dialing.
Sadly you are very right that Nokia buried their VOIP deep in the menus. Though I use VOIP every single day and rely on it for my business calls. Martin and I may be some of the very few.
By the way, just today Nokia announced that they have produced their 500 millionth handset at their facility in Hungary. So world wide iPhone is just a drop in the bucket. In my opinion what is so important about the iPhone is that it brought us the app store which I think will revolutionize the industry.
4. Diego | April 3rd, 2009 at 1:28 pm
Hi;
My company develops VoIP for mobile devices, and for the last year we saw a huge demand from all kind of operators, from cellular carriers, VoIP service providers and regular land-line carriers.
The question of installation and use is not the real question, the question is how the operator can bring new business and revenues.
I agree that a complicated to install software will fail, but today the mobile operating systems are given a very good level of APIs so vendor like us can write a fully integrated VoIP for the mobile device.
Maybe some devices are easier to integrate that others ( for example our software is fully integrated with Symbian OS and Windows Mobile 5,6, but is a stand-alone application on the iPhone and iPod Touch for the obvious reasons).
We are working very close with the operators to minimize the configuration task of the software. The subscriber receives and SMS with a link, press that link, and oala, the software is installed and automatically configured. From there the user makes normal calls using the native device interface ( on iPhone he must open the application ).
That is the secret, to minimize the subscribers part of the process, In this part I agree with Tzahi.
Diego
5. Tsahi Levent-Levi | April 3rd, 2009 at 2:48 pm
Diego,
I tend to think that the numbers speak for themselves. If you take the iPhone stats, you’ll notice that users who download “stuff” usually don’t end up using it – only 1% of the downloads get used eventually.
Add to that the amount of noise and duplicate applications that can do the same thing (VoIP in this case), and you end up with very little market share (=few users).
And that’s on the iPhone, which is built and designed for people who actually want to interact with downloading stuff. What happens when you go to the mass market of feature phones?
I think that if VoIP is ever to succeed on handsets it should probably come from the operators.
Tsahi
6. Diego | April 3rd, 2009 at 3:32 pm
Hi;
Yes, that was my point. The operators will end up deploying VoIP To:
- Save on roaming,
- International calls
- To route calls made on the mobile device to their network, for example a fix carrier will give a mobile SIP client for free to “still from the mobile carrier” mobile calls when the user is on WiFi.
About the iPhone and statistics I agree with you. But this is another type of application. It is not a free game or another application, this will save to the user real money. For example a 4 days trip to Barcelona may end up with a 600 dollars bill for roaming, when using VoIP it is 0 ( assuming that you buy internet anyway ).
Diego
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