Palringo makes it’s debut in North America today. It’s a cross platform multi-headed IM client for mobile devices that supports all of the popular IM services available. Plus it has a nifty voice chat feature that sounds a lot like the very popular push-t0-talk feature available on some networks. Palringo is available for Windows Mobile, Symbian and java-based handsets at www.palringo.com. it will soon be available on iPhone and Blackberry as well.
Multi-headed IM has long been controversial in the PC world where ownership of the customer has been viewed as a right by the IM cloud owners. As a result, many people run multiple clients. The situation is starting to proliferate to the mobile world, where (for example) I have run GTalk, Blackberry Messenger, and various other clients on my Blackberry. In the constrained mobile world, though, this is a disaster in waiting. Multiple background clients mean increased CPU cycles consumed affecting performance, battery and bandwidth consumption.
Palringo has the right idea, given the intransigence of the big IM cloud operators. If they can get the carriers and handset manufacturers on their side, they’ll have a decent business moving forward.
Alec Saunders is the Vice President of Developer Relations for BlackBerry make Research in Motion. This is his personal blog, with his personal viewpoints. Prior to this Alec was the CEO and co-founder of Calliflower — the easiest way to hold a meeting, online, on a conference call, or on the go. A double-decade veteran of product management and marketing, he spent nine years at Microsoft where he helped launch Windows 95, the first two versions of Internet Explorer, the Universal Plug and Play initiative, the push into home markets, opt-in email marketing and what might well go down in history as the very first direct email list ever.
