Here’s a thing I realized talking to a friend of mine the other day: Apple isn’t going to focus on visual communications in 2010 – not in their Macs and probably not on their iPads either. My friend, who is aware of our own SCOPIA VC240 product – a 24″ PC monitor with built-in HD video conferencing capabilities, told me that Apple’s 27″ all-in-one Mac monitor should probably add such a capability as well. He didn’t understand why they didn’t
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By Tsahi Levent-Levi | March 9th, 2010 | Filed under Technology
Earlier this week I’ve outlined what the SIP parity group at the IMTC is all about, but then again – a question does arise – where in the world is H.323 these days? Does Carmen Sandiego know where H.323 is? (image by ~5ir3ntropy) I’ve heard people announce the death of H.323 a lot of times. I guess the first time was about 8 years ago. Funny thing is, it’s still going strong – we actually have new customers
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By Tsahi Levent-Levi | February 18th, 2010 | Filed under Standardization
It seems like Apple has succeeded where others have failed – it has opened up the market in Korea for foreign handset vendors. And it has done so singlehandedly. Before the iPhone, most of the Korean handset market has been ruled by local vendors. The service providers in Korea had their own set of special specifications, usually written in Korean, making it harder for foreigners to participate in the game. One success story of a foreign company in Korea
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By Tsahi Levent-Levi | February 11th, 2010 | Filed under Clients, Technology
[Antoine RJ Wright is a smart person I have never met, but one who I met through this blog. I've ended up reading his writings and also his comments on this blog once in a while. In my search for a Skype killer post, Antoine left an interesting idea that I just had to have clarified a bit. I ended up asking Antoine to write a guest post on his idea of the open address book, which he did. I
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By guest | January 18th, 2010 | Filed under Technology
Is it only me or are service providers missing the train? Skype has just come out with a press release at CES around HD video telephony embedded into televisions. These televisions won’t be available until later this year, but what’s a few months between friends. The end result? Our televisions are about to take away the need for telephony services from those service providers’ triple play packages. And they do that by throwing presence AND video conferencing into the package. Would I be paying 20$/month for an unlimited national calling package from my cable company here in Israel or would I go for a 6$/month plan from Skype with the added value of being able to call people on Skype and do video calls as well? Tough question. Not. Time to wake up and smell the humus Service providers need to wake up and smell the humus. If they want to be able to provide communication means to us consumers, they need to make sure VoIP companies don’t get their share by migrating from the desktop into consumer electronics. Skype understands they can’t rely on the desktop and are actively moving into businesses, mobile handsets and now consumer electronics. By doing that, they are ensuring that initiatives such as One Voice won’t kill them. It seems like operators aren’t fast enough in their decisions.
By Tsahi Levent-Levi | January 7th, 2010 | Filed under Technology
It’s funny how the open source movement eventually got us to the place where we are now: a point in time when closed became the new open. And let me explain. Apple Exhibit A: the iPhone. It’s an “open platform” – it took control over the phone’s features from the operators and gave it to the users. But the Apple folks allow people to download apps only from their AppStore. Nowhere else. And they are banning some of the applications.
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By Tsahi Levent-Levi | January 4th, 2010 | Filed under Technology
Recently, someone approached me through the blog’s contact page, requesting my 5 cents on the VoIP market. He was especially interested in Skype and he actually had an interesting question: Who can pose a real threat to Skype? Can it be Gizmo5 or Nimbuzz? Or any other VoIP or Mobile VoIP company? The simplest answer I can give to this question is: no one. Or at least none of those startups. And now that Google has scooped up Gizmo5, one
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By Tsahi Levent-Levi | November 19th, 2009 | Filed under Technology
VoIP blogs have been filled with optimism lately about the prospects of mobile VoIP. Om Malik reports about this: But two recent statements by carriers from different parts of the world are making me wonder if the mobile phone companies are softening their stance on mobile VoIP. Last week, Verizon went out of its way to highlight the fact that it had tested VoIP calling on its new 4G wireless network. (The other 4G wireless company, Clearwire, has warmed up
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By Tsahi Levent-Levi | August 27th, 2009 | Filed under Technology
Know all of these great mobile applications that we keep seeing in the app stores? Especially the ones doing VoIP? Well, it seems like they’re not really made to stick – at least not if operators have their say about them. While one of the most interesting news out of MWC was the fact that Nokia N97 comes with a pre-installed Skype client and able to run on both WiFi and 3G, operators O2 and Orange are not thrilled. iPhone
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By Tsahi Levent-Levi | March 2nd, 2009 | Filed under Clients
