The Softphone Market

Michael Graves has what he calls a rant on softphones. I call it a good recap on the state of the sector that is just begging for a winner.

While he omitted Gizmo5 from SipPhone, he sure gave CounterPath's EyeBeam the Texas style whoopin' they deserve. Despite starting out as the best and most useful client that works across the board, their sputtering development effort, that sometimes seems to border on stagnation, came through loud and clear in Graves' rant.

Given the proliferation of lightweight laptops, wireless connectivity via WiFi and 3G, the impending presence of WiMax, someone out there should be building the SIP based softphone that is as good or better than Skype is with their client which really works across all platforms very well.

Counterpath with Bria and EyeBeam is ideally suited to win the game, yet for various reasons they have failed with essential functionality like echo cancellation and background noise suppression when compared with Skype. That said, as critical as I am of them, I'm actually rooting for them to rise up and set the standard, but actually suspect it will be some other company that takes the prize.

Comments

[Michael Graves]

Thanks for the mention. You are right, I overlooked Gizmo5. I've had an account with them almost since SIP Phone began.

Their client software is wideband capable but only using the GIPS codec family, so no interoperability with basic G.722.

A couple of months ago I suggested this to them and it fell upon deaf ears.

FWIW, Dan Berninger of FWD also hinted that they might be interested in updating their "Pulver Communicator" to be G.722 capable. However, they have been silent since August and I fear for their well being.