Is there a trend underway? Mobile startups everywhere are looking beyond cheap voice calls as generous minute packages have niched these players into providing cheap international long distance and not much more. Om Malik profiles several this morning, including the newly “rebooted” iSkoot.
The conditions are right for these companies. As first Apple, then Google, RIM, and Nokia all announced new mobile applications “stores”, the shackles imposed by carriers on software developers have gradually loosened. The iSkoots, Truphones and mig33’s of the world were formerly left to their own resources to gain distribution – cutting deals with carriers, or doing downloads over the air. Neither option is all that profitable, nor easy for the customer. The environment is now changing.
Having weathered the downturn with large cash reserves, these folks are now starting to deliver real value added service on top of the infrastructure they originally built to provide cheap calls. And with these fat cash reserves, they’re poised to capitalize on the economy as their less flush competitors experience the … ahem… downside of the “free” business model. It’s downright Darwinian.
A trend? Definitely.
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Alec Saunders is the Vice President of Developer Relations for BlackBerry maker 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.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Alec,
Do you think that downloadable mobile VoIP clients have any future, or are they just a passing trend?
Though the app stores bring them an opportunity, it looks to me like something that can't hold for the long run. As these are not an additional application/game/productivity tool on the handset, operators will sooner or later catch on to the game and start blocking these apps when they introduce their own.
Tsahi
Tsahi, I think they have to evolve into value-added services. VoIP on mobile is taking the arbitrage play we saw on land lines to new devices. It’s a decent business model today, but there’s no reason to believe we won’t see a similar outcome — falling minutes prices.