Archive for February, 2009
RIM came out with an announcement that Blackberries can replace desk phones for enterprise users. A (blackberry) bold statement, and one I do not share. Eric Krapf, over at NoJitter, thinks this is the closest thing to a desktop phone killer ever. While that is true, with no other alternative out there, I think it’s a bit premature to mourn the death of the beloved IP desktop phone. In RADVISION we feel the downfall of the economy and measures have
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By Tsahi Levent-Levi | February 26th, 2009 | Filed under Clients
The current economy situation has raised the issue of expenses reduction for enterprises, both small and large. On the IT side this sometimes boils down to opting for open source solutions. While I can’t refute the business case behind this, it does seem that “open source” as a term is either being over-used or simply abused. I am not one to fuss over semantics (I didn’t even mention Rich writing about it in relations to VoIP and Internet Telephony), but
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By Tsahi Levent-Levi | February 23rd, 2009 | Filed under Standardization
Michael Mace at Mobile Opportunity complains about market share statistics – he is so right, and it’s not only the smartphones market, it is for virtually any market and any product. Rich Tehrany from TMCnet states that VoIP isn’t Internet Telephony – I’d say that IPTV is not Internet TV or or that there is no such thing as UC, Social Media, Web 2.0 or Phone 2.0. It’s only semantics. Important ones, but still semantics. Josh Bernoff, one of the authors of groundswell, writes in his blog about his bad experience at Hyatt Regency Philadelphia. It’s not VoIP related, but a great read, especially if you’re on the road a lot. It might even make some rethink the video conferencing solution to reduce business trips J IP Business reports that Comverse is launching an application store. This one is targeted at service providers to deliver new application. Once IMS happens, such stores will prosper as it standardizes the network architecture and allows rapid development and deployment of services. I have started a similar roundup of interesting posts related to visual communications on my talking video blog as well. You’re invited to read it as well.
By Tsahi Levent-Levi | February 19th, 2009 | Filed under Around the net
This week should have been a “happy” day for Americans. A day when the government pulls the plug on analog TV and moves everyone to digital TV. The only catch is that everyone would be required to switch to digital TVs or use an adapter. In other words – not going to happen. It already got delayed to June, to give “more time” for people to switch. The move to digital places a lot of burden on those who have
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By Tsahi Levent-Levi | February 16th, 2009 | Filed under Clients, Technology
Most would agree that the iPhone is probably the best phone in the world, maybe not for the business user, but it definitely made the most hype and has the largest fan base. On the other hand, Windows Mobile is considered one of the worst operating systems for a mobile handset – up to the point that it is sometimes not even considered as a competitor in the smartphone market. So how come last year in the last quarter, Windows Mobile handsets sold more than the iPhone? Probably due to the success of HTC, and the number of different vendors that develop and sell Windows Mobile based handsets. 2009 is going to be very interesting. We will see a fight between platforms and “closed” phones: on one side of the ring we have iPhone, Palm Pre and Blackberry, on the other side Android and Windows Mobile. Will an independent OS win due to the sheer amount of vendors or will the closed phones win due to slicker end products? * I have decided to ignore Nokia and Symbian here – I don’t have an opinion about them just yet.
By Tsahi Levent-Levi | February 12th, 2009 | Filed under Clients
This week’s Carnival takes place at All About iPhone.net. Matt Radford does a good job at summarizing last week’s posts of the mobile industry. As we’re getting closer to Mobile World Congress, the carnival will probably have more posts around this topic. wipJAM is the first in the carnival to provide information for developers heading to MWC, so head to the carnival to read his post as well as others.
By Tsahi Levent-Levi | February 11th, 2009 | Filed under Uncategorized
This is a question that Koreans will be faced in 2012. Boy, would I LOVE to be Korean. Last week, Om Malik wrote about Korea’s plans to boost their internet infrastructure to 1 Gbps by 2012. After a raised eyebrow on my part, and serious craving on relocating to Korea, I took the time to ask our sales director in Korea to check for me, a bit with his friends, how do they actually use the internet and see what
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By Tsahi Levent-Levi | February 9th, 2009 | Filed under Technology
I’ve already indicated that TV Widgets were a huge hit at CES – they are the first real step in connecting television directly to the internet. Taking it a step further, they may even pave the way for the TV Videophone. Video conferencing today is all about enterprises: how you reduce the travel necessary for meetings, how you increase communication between your offices, how you deploy video without increasing head count due to video system management issues. A few
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By Tsahi Levent-Levi | February 5th, 2009 | Filed under Clients, IPTV
Ever noticed how phones tend to work well together? On the other hand, did you bump into non-voice-call-or-SMS-features that didn’t quite work? MMS anyone? Or maybe video calls in their early days? Standards are hard to follow. Mobile handsets, like most communication devices today, follow standards. They do so in hopes of interoperability – having one product communicate well with another (we’re doing that here frequently enough). You can think of the printing business as an example: one company
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By Tsahi Levent-Levi | February 2nd, 2009 | Filed under Standardization
This week’s Carnival is at Mobile Broadband Blog. The most important piece of news is that this year has started off well for the carnival with carnivals that are packed full of content. My own pick out of this carnival would be Steve Litchfield’s Megapixel microscopy images done by mobile phones – an eye opener. It has started to look like standalone cameras are a dying breed.
By Tsahi Levent-Levi | February 2nd, 2009 | Filed under Around the net
