February 19th, 2006
You are currently browsing the articles from the VoIP Digest written on February 19th, 2006.
Another day, another VoIP client!
The Internets are starting to buzz about a new VoIP peer-to-peer client of ambiguous origins called Barablu. They want to take down Skype. Yup, just like Napster wants to shank iTunes and iPod. The client, leaves me cold for many reasons, the biggest being I cannot be sure about the company behind this product. They can do PC-to-PC calling! Yawn! And then there are their lofty claims. IP phone to Mobile phone calling for free? Actually, that’s no different from what Skype does right now. The who claim of free mobile-to-mobile calls.
Barablu will be launching free calls from mobile to mobile (Wi-Fi enabled) by using VoIP technology over Wireless LAN, making it the world’s first company to do so. It also offers free calls from broadband phones and PCs along with instant messaging between mobiles and PCs.
What a load of #*^!. What they really mean to say that you can make free phone calls from Barablu on one WiFi enabled mobile phone to another mobile phone that also uses has a Barablu client installed on that. Since Skype can already do this, this cannot be seen as a gee-whiz feature. The only marginal advantage I see right now is that they have a client that works on Nokia 9500 Communicator. And if this is a SIP based client, which is hard to say at least from their website, then it is something notable. Otherwise, lets move on….
Written by Om Malik on February 19th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Vonage and Skype.
Update #2: Six Apart, the San Francisco-based start-up behind TypePad, MoveableType and Live Journal is rumored to have raised another $12 million in Series C financing, according to a report in Investment Dealers’ Digest. The names of investors have not been disclosed. (I am burning up the phone lines to find the details!) The report says that the funding has come from three undisclosed investors, and hints that one of them might be Intel. Paul Kedrosky adds his two cents.
While I have not been able to speak with anyone from Six Apart, some of my sources in Silicon Valley are telling me that this one is rumored to be a hotly contested deal. The pre-money valuation was said to be around $80 million when Six Apart started raising money, but since then it has become a hotly contested deal, and the pre-money valuation is said to have climbed north of $100 million. Sources say the funding round hasn’t closed as yet. I am going to qualify all this as a rumor since I have not spoken to Six Apart folks. And when I do, I will update the story accordingly.
In recent months, the company has been taking it on the chin mostly because of infrastructure issues. I bet a lot of money, if it has been raised, will be spent to upgrade the infrastructure. And of course there are 90-plus employees. Those familiar with the company say Six Apart’s revenues have tripled in last 12-months. (Take this last bit with a grain of salt… however!) There is a pending launch of a new enterprise focused product, which could further consolidate SixApart’s position as a core Web 2.0 infrastructure player.
The big question is what is the exit for Six Apart. An IPO? That would make sense given their subscription model layered on top of hot-new trend of blogging (at least from Wall Street perspective) and possibility of another “eyeball” revenue stream. But what if no IPO happens? Who buys them? My bet is that it won’t be someone like Yahoo, because the deal is already too rich for Sunnyvale gang. The best fit would of course be someone like News Corp. All that is still idle speculation on my part, so disregard it. Too much coffee this morning!
It would be great to hear what Six Apart team has to say!
Written by Om Malik on February 19th, 2006 with no comments.
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At the recently concluded 3GSM show, Sony Ericsson was pretty puffed about the fact that they sold 3 million Walkman phones in the six months since launch. They are betting that their W950, a 3G phone with 4 gigabytes of flash memory will push their market share and help fight off Apple’s iPod. The W950 is supposed to come out in the third quarter and will cost between $357 and $476, according to published reports. “This certainly ups the ante in the battle between Apple and the phone makers for mobile music,” said analyst Ben Wood at market research group Gartner..
I don’t think its going to be as easy. Take for example the six months SE sold 3 million walkman phones. During the same time frame, Apple sold nearly 21 million iPods. 14,043,000 iPods in the most recent quarter, and 6,451,000 iPods in three months prior to that. We at GigaOM are a bit mixed about the current generation of Sony Ericsson Walkman phones. Matt liked W600, but only because it was cheap. I think music phones are going to get quite popular in emerging markets because of the high cost of iPod, and lack of iTunes music store. I still think, the prices of these music phones need to come down quite a bit, and they have to become simpler to use, before they can seriously challenge iPod.
Written by Om Malik on February 19th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Unwired and iPod.
British Telecom is getting serious about VoIP. Under competitive pressure from upstarts, they are taking battle into the enemy camp. The proof of this comes in their decision to bring price parity in their BT Communicator (PC-client) and BT Broadband Talk (that uses an ATA) services. The British incumbent will also offer its BT Broadband Talk service to customers who don’t buy broadband access from BT.
This is a good move for the UK incumbent which is facing increasing competitive pressure from upstarts. The biggest threat to BT’s voice business comes from Tesco, the supermarket chain that has started to market its bargain-basement VoIP services to its customers. Wanadoo, another BT rival has signed-up 100,000 customers in less than 12-months it has offered a VoIP package. Dixons, VoIP Cheap, and scores of others have jumped into the VoIP arena, in a situation reminiscent of the early days of DSL. Nevertheless, BT’s efforts will dampen (and perhaps further increase marketing costs) of voice service providers such as Vonage.
Written by Om Malik on February 19th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Vonage and VoIP (the New Phone).