VoIP Watch

A Distracted Apple Isn't A Good Thing

Let's face it, the bNet article on Apple and their recent market entry announcement for new iPods is a very accurate depiction of the result of the launch.

This is not a reflection on the products from Apple, but a result of the company being distracted and the messaging being diffused. This happens because despite the perception of Apple as a giant, their management team and managers are extremely thinly spread. The company doesn't have stacks of people like other companies who do a small amount of anything. Instead they have a few people who do things that cover large amounts of ground.

In this case the announcements, coming on the heels of distraction caused by Eric Schmidt's departure, the FCC investigation, the Google Voice fiasco and a few other issues around the app store, all leads a small group into the world of distraction. Add to that the "return of Steve Jobs" and you have a recipe for distraction.

Story, positioning and messaging are crucial to a successful product introduction, but right now Apple is holding back because anything they say has impact on the FCC actions, as well as potential litigation from shareholders. Talk about being between a rock and a hard place, these are for Apple the first wave of rough seas since Jobs returned in 1996-97. That kind of distraction leads to exactly what happened, and likely caused Apple to hold up some launches of "new" products simply because they couldn't do it really right.

Say So Long To SightSpeed Consumer Version

After a long run, and a successful exit to Logitech, SightSpeed for consumers has been quietly retired by the folks at Logitech.

If you visit the web page, you'll see that SightSpeed for Business, an app my agency helped launch, remains front and center, but Logitech has taken SightSpeed and turned it into Vid, a personal one on one video chat solution. Since my account is a business account I can't determine with certainty, but reports are that the SightSpeed service is no longer active for consumers and Vid is what replaced it.

Last week at IT Expo, I moderated a panel on the future of video conferencing, and pretty much used an axis of differentiation, as well as category naming to really segment the marketplace.

Apps like Vid, Yahoo Messenger, Skype, all which offer one on one video calling are really Video Chat.

SightSpeed for Business, ooVoo, iChat, are multi-party video calling.

An app like EyeBeam or Bria, both of which are from Counterpath are SIP Video applications and likely have the most upside potential because they are h.264 and SIP based, thus technology ready for what everyone has agreed is the standard for video in the coming era.

Above all that are the various systems that are room based, ala BrightCom, Tandberg, PolyCom, HP, LifeSize and of course, the Mac Daddy of it all now, Cisco's Telepresence.

The key here is that the Video Chat is really a consumer grade, free model of talking and seeing one another and closest to the model of the Jetsons video calling, something that Scott Wharton nailed with VidTel, his no brain, plug and play, dial and see solution that makes video calling as easy as dialing the phone, because it is using a phone.

To me, what Logitech has done, is very, well, in the words of Mr. Spock, "logical." Since it's launch rumors have it they have garnered some one million users, largely from promotion in the boxes of their video cameras and online communications to users of their products. This shows me that the vision and reality of SightSpeed's past CEO Peter Csathy, founder Aaron Rosenberg, COO Scott Lomond and VP Marketing wiz Eric Quanstrom (aka as EQ), whom I had the pleasure of working with for almost four years was dead on the money. That being, make a simple, easy to use video calling solution, that's portable, and people will use it.

Skype Shutting Down Extras Program

Give Om Malik lots of credit. On the heels of his super successful Mobilize Conference yesterday he's breaking the news on Skype winding down it's extra's program.

This likely means two things:

1) Skype is going to internalize more development

2) Skype will begin offering more services that are labeled as Skype, vs. from third parties.

In my view this means that Skype will be ramping up services like conference calling, auto-attendant, faxing, deliver a more robust find me/follow me service and expand their mobile handset client software efforts.

While initially, the developers who built the Extras program up will be alarmed, I think this shows us one more thing. People want to talk but not much more than that.

More thoughts-I think this puts more emphasis on the Skype APIs and third party developers who want to leverage Skype as a pipe, not only as an application. By getting rid of the "Extras" Skype also is able to present a cleaner balance sheet, as the revenue for extras was really more of a pass through with Skype minutes and credit balances in users accounts paying the bills to the Extra's suppliers. In essence the "Extras" made the numbers look fatter and now with more prudent management and investment, Skype will be able to cleanly show how much money is really staying within the company, than reporting one that really what is nothing more than a collections and payment disbursement operation.

Initially this may look like Skype is just killing off their young, something they have been accused of in the past. My expanded view though is that there is more coming behind this as Skype both internalizes what can make them money and how they can play in the "Open" world, which is where the Developer Program, led by ex Counterpath CTO Jason Fischl begins to take shape.

Skype on iPhone Now In Canada inside Apple App Store

Alec Saunders and Jim Courtney will now be happy as yesterday Skype let us all know that their iPhone app now works in Canada and is available in the Apple App Store.

The delay was caused by a licensing dispute, but that seems to have been cleared up now.

A Comment About Comments

As many of you know I moderate comments on this blog. I do that for one reason. To keep the content on VoIPWatch on point and topical for each post.

Many times I see comment spam and those are deleted. Other times I see what is clearly an attempt to drive relevancy in search or to try to coattail on a very successful brand by being linked to the story. Those too usually get deleted.

Bottom line. If you want to have a comment posted, do what the word COMMENT means. Comment. Don't promote.

Skype SIP Hits The Shores With ShoreTel

ShoreTel, one of the better and more forward thinking IP-PBX brands has become the first big brand to announce a relationship with Skype, and I don't think this will be the last as Skype's pursuit of the business market revs up:

So here are some wild guesses

1) First I expect a small box manufacturer to come out with a combination WiFi, Router, VoIP/Skype solution that has all the things small business needs for the under 10 person set. This is too logical and too needed. In many ways, with Skype it will remind old timers of the AT&T Merlin, perhaps the most simple to configure office PBX ever marketed by AT&T.

2) Second-Silver Lake Partners which just bought Skype is also a big player in Avaya so I expect Avaya to be the SME player in the mix. Avaya already embraces SIP and has a very strong understanding of softphones. Case in point, it was Avaya and Cisco which were the first to have their capability put on Nokia E series devices so the phone could be used as an extension of the PBX. To me, given the all in the family status I would expect Avaya to be one of the next ones out the door.

3) Third-Cisco. It's way too logical. Cisco's ex VP Mike Volpi is part of the Index Ventures group that was in on the buying of Skype from eBay and has very strong relationships at his old company where he was once rumored to being groomed for the top job when John Chambers retires. No one knows the intersections of IP communications and impact on network growth better than he from outside Cisco, and Skype means more packets, especially video so for Cisco to embrace Skype in my mind is a no brainer. What's more I would not be surprised to find out that Skype and Cisco develop telepresence light using Skype Video one day.

4) PolyCom-this will take a while as Polycom has a large case of Not Invented Here syndrome, but as Avaya cuts into market share, I would figure that you'll see them come around.

5) SNOM-the German handset manufacturer makes SIP endpoints. Embedding SILK in the device will open up a realm of possibilities. Their distribution is global and they make very good handsets that are eye catching and appealing, which is perfect for the early adoptive small office user of Skype who grows up and moves into the business world.

One key point to also remember, as these manufacturers embrace SKype's SIP model, they also embrace SILK.

GigaOm's Colin Gibbs has perspective on why Shore-Tel made the move.

Second Numbers on Cell Phone Reminds Me of TalkPlus

About two years ago, Jeff Black and his team at TalkPlus had an idea that could have revolutionized the mobile industry. The concept was giving mobile phone users multiple lines for inbound and outbound calling. The idea, in many ways, was the exact opposite of GrandCentral, meaning instead of one number going everywhere, TalkPlus was about multiple numbers ending up in one place, and in most cases that was the mobile phone.

Now two services offer stripped down versions of what TalkPlus' team was setting out to do.

One is called SecondVoice and the other, from TokTumi is called Line2 which has a very cool application now out in the iPhone App Store. These are both "me too" offerings, and compared to the never achieved success of TalkPlus, nothing but features, not companies.

These kinds of applications are not hard to build. I recently in London saw a technology from a leading edge company that lets you build a GoogleVoice like service in less than a minute based on a robust backend.

Bottom line, these new features demonstrate that imagination is very much alive in the VoIP world, and most of the effort is around the mobile world. These features are the kind of ideas that the mobile operators should be embracing, that being new services that add convenience to people's lives.

Brad Garlinghouse Reemerges @ AOL

Former YAHOO Senior VP Brad Garlinghouse has reemerged and will be leading AOL's Silicon Valley operations, with the title ofPresident of Internet and Mobile Communications and reporting directly to Tim Armstrong, a position he's very well qualified for.

What was very interesting in reading the announcement was his most recent role with Silver Lake Partners saying "Garlinghouse was most recently at Silver Lake Partners as an in-house Senior Advisor." That indicates that the very savvy and shrewd Garlinghouse likely played a role in the Skype take-away from eBay.

More importantly, given Garlinghouse has a good handle on VoIP and early stage companies, it wouldn't surprise me to see him dabbling in a few new startups as part of his new role at AOL has him also as the West Coast lead for AOL Ventures.

Om Malik's summary gives a very good chronology of Garlinghouse's career, though he was not part of the DialPad team which went onto start GrandCentral, though Brad did lead Yahoo's acquisition of Dialpad that brought over GrandCentral founders Craig Walker and Vincent Paquet.

VoipWatch Report #1 September 8 2009

I've decided to start to create a short podcast about VoIP. As we move away from text and into talk, this will be a quick way to get the news out.

Please let me know what you think.

Topics discussed include:

An IT Expo Recap

Upcoming Conferences-Mobilize, HD Summit, Demo and VON

The MiFi and Wireless Broadband USB Modems

Bringing the Mobile Mountain to Mohammad

Leave it to the sponsor of a formula one racing team to understand how to move things fast. Over in Qutar, Vodafone is experimenting with a traveling retail store concept. The concept reminds me of the ice cream truck that used to come around at night in the summer months when I grew up in Philadelphia.

None of us would have gone ten minutes to the local Baskin and Robbins as that meant finding someone who would drive. But every night there was a line at the Good Humor truck.