Adds voicemail, sending SMS, and localization for Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Swedish and Traditional Chinese as well as English. Skype displays the language in your iPhone-wide settings.
"Furthermore, plans(unless specifically designated for tethering usage) cannot be used for any applications that tether the device (through use of, including without limitation, connection kits, other phone/PDA-to computer accessories, BLUETOOTH® or any other wireless technology) to Personal Computers (including without limitation, laptops), or other equipment for any purpose."
"Accordingly, AT&T reserves the right to (i) deny, disconnect, modify and/or terminate Service, without notice, to anyone it believes is using the Service in any manner prohibited"
Fine print in your contract extends AT&T control into all the devices you use.
Mobile Net Neutrality says neither your handset maker nor your wireless carrier should alter your service based on the content or endpoints of your communication. You wouldn't let your ISP dictate what software goes on your PC or which web sites your surf. Why should your mobile operator have that power?
Yet Apple supports AT&T's ban on VoIP in theory, and full Skype in practice.
Mobile Carterfone says mobile customers should be free to connect to mobile voice and data services without a mobile carrier approving or dictating the device. You wouldn't let your ISP dictate what PCs or printers you connect to your DSL or cable modem. Why would you give your mobile operator that power?
Yet Apple supports AT&T's upcoming iPhone tethering fees.
Tethering fees give AT&T the power to approve or disallow your use of your phone as a modem. This is unheard of in most of the world.
AT&T is expected to add a surcharge of 30% to 50% for the privilege of using your existing device and bandwidth you already bought.
Tethering fees feel strange. The charges should stop at the first device, the connecting device. An operator should charge for primary connectivity, not downstream connections.
What other imaginary services could your phone company bill?
Cell-handoffs. Get the first 5 free and then 10 cents a go. Neil Stratford
Secondary listening. Special speakerphone detection modes to charge you extra for other people overhearing the call. Neil Stratford
Voice by the word. Charge for voice the way they charge for SMS. 10 cents for 15 words.
Volume detection. Shouting must mean the message is very important so charge more for louder conversation. mort
The phone sports a great new camera, built for video. But only the one camera, facing away from you, the wrong way for video calls. Video calling needs a camera next to the screen, something Nokia's N series phones do well.
This isn't great news for Skype users. iPhone programmers can use the webcam to store video to a file, but won't be able to write apps that manipulate or route the stream. This means Skype for iPhone won't be able to add video calling any time soon.
Why didn't Apple make that leap?
It could be simple manufacturing economics: it's too early in the iPhone's life to get the cost of video components down.
It could be learning curve: vid-to-file is easier to design and manage than streaming video.
It might be battery life: video eats up CPU and batteries quickly.
It may be a carrier issue: mobile operators have been hostile to anything that looks like VoIP. Anticompetitive behavior, anyone?
Now that I've made my point and spent last 15 minutes hyper linking the references above, what I am trying to get at is how easy Skype has made itself to users of all walks. Being that this company has made its service completely platform agnostic, it has tremendous power to reach a wide range of users and become the de facto internet-based communications tool. I can't think of another IM or VOIP application with this broad reach across various hardware and software.
As for my family, Skype has been an indispensable tool when traveling abroad. Given all the available Skype options, we can easily keep in touch so long as internet is available never having to worry about having pre-paid SIM or phone cards.
Skype, in my opinion, may be the best mobile communication provider for a non telecom operator. Of course, with Gmail's Video and VOIP support over browser recently launched, it can pose a potential threat to Skype's territory as it would technically be platform agnostic. But until mobile browsers are powerful enough to take advantage, Skype is still much ahead of the game. Way to go Skype!
Note: Skype isn't including iPhone or other mobile application store downloads in its realtime stats feed. I'm sure they'll be add in for financial statements, but the Skype.com download statistics are no longer complete.
Skype, one of the most used IM/Chat/VOIP/Video-Conferencing application for PC and Mac is slowly working its dominance up the mobile alley and we love it! I've always known it's support for Windows Mobile, Nokia devices and Wi-Fi Phones (Skype Phones) but it was the recent integration with Sony's Playstation Portable firmware upgrade as well as the hot-off-the-press Skype for iPhone/iPod Touch that is really cooking up some serious mobile progress. With Skype application for BlackBerry phones coming soon, Skype is in a very good position to become one of the leaders in mobile application. Having Skype on the go across multiple platform is definitely going to enhance our mobile experience, this is very exciting indeed.
In this article, I will attempt to compare Skype for iPhone vs. Skype for Playstation Portable. I'll update this entry when the BlackBerry version becomes available.
The iPhone (iPod Touch) and Playstation Portable is arguably two of the most popular gadgets for travelers on the go. When I review communication gadgets or software, I always like to imagine myself traveling abroad where I would not have access to a local cell phone and would like to keep in touch with friends or family at the luxury of my own mobile gadget. The appeal of Skype has always been there for me for that reason, that is why a laptop has been essential for all my travels until smartphones started to feature applications to support various communication needs such as Fring. That said, I think iPhone or Playstation Portable (PSP) are two of the most carried devices for travelers. I can just see myself in an airport lounge dialing international long distance over Wi-Fi to keep in touch with loved ones via either device.
Skype for iPhone
The iPhone and iPod Touch needs very little introduction. With a large touch screen display and portrait layout, it makes a very good UI candidate for Skype (much like its desktop counterpart).
Everything is integrated so well together on this handy little app. For example, your contacts from your iPhone is automatically hooked up with Skype in addition to its default contact list. To see who is online, you can easily toggle the software button towards the top of the screen.
One of the big advantage of iPhone is it's integrated microphone that Skype can take advantage of without the need of additional headset. The VOIP function will only work in a Wi-Fi environment (at home, coffee house, airport lounges, etc...) whereas the text Chats can work over your phone's standard data plan.
I love the fact that this little app does everything its desktop counter part can do, including editing one's profile or add more Skype-out funds over the handset. Overall, its an amazing application that has been done right, I love it and its free to download!
Pros: Excellent UI and layout, very easy to use and intuitive. Perfect integration to leverage iPhone's hardware (buttons, camera, etc...) Everything your desktop Skype can do can be done here!
Cons: No VOIP over 3G data, no web-cam video conference, app must be installed separately (only mentioning this because PSP is part of firmware OS)
Skype for Playstation Portable (PSP)
I love the convenience of having my beloved PSP-3000 as a gaming device and knowing it can also surf the web with Flash while keeping up with the communications needs via Skype.
No application to install here, its part of the firmware 3.90+ upgrade. While the PSP doesn't have a touchscreen UI and the horizontal layout is not taking advantage of the screen real estate as much, it does offer a full suite of Skype features. The SkypeOut and VOIP PC calls are there along with text chat.
Because the onscreen keyboard is driven by the directional keys and based on the 12-button numeric pad, it can be frustrating when compared to the overall iPhone experience.
The one part I have to gripe about is the need of an external microphone. My Griffin Tune Buds Mobile with integrated mic works great but if I forgot my headphones at home then I am stuck with only text chats capabilities. While Sony and Skype recommend you buy their official headset/mic kit, the iPhone OEM headset with mic should work as well. Sony should have integrated a mic solution, after all, this is their 3rd revision to the PSP franchise.
Lets hope Skype will be available for the DS or DSi someday. Overall, I still enjoy having the option of running Skype on my PSP. While its unlikely I'll be traveling only the PSP, I can see myself using the PSP for Skype to conserve the battery life for my iPhone while traveling abroad. Due to the nature of not having any data connection, the entire operation is rendered useless if I am not nearby a Wi-Fi hotspot.
Pros: Fully integrated as part of PSP firmware, no application install required. PSP's large display is great for Skype.
Cons: Lack of integrated Mic (and Camera for profile picture, etc...) Wi-Fi is required all the time for any communications (including text chat)
Winner: Skype for iPhone! With voice call quality being relatively the same, I have to go with iPhone because you just can't beat the convenience of having your iPhone with Skype with you at all times. The integrated mic makes the entire package there and ready to go 24/7. The touchscreen plays well with the UI and it has instantly become one of those default applications I must have on my iPhone.
No-VoIP Clause (Wi-Fi tethered). Apple's deal with AT&T (and presumably Apple's other carrier partners) forces Apple to force Skype off of mobile networks for voice or video calls. So Skype can only make or take calls when connected to the Internet through Wi-Fi.
No background apps (no Skype dialtone). Apple's iPhone OS prevents multiple apps from running. So I can only have Skype dialtone when it is in the foreground. You need Skype dialtone, connection to the Skype network, to share presence, to get chat updates, to receive Skype calls. When iPhone OS 3 launches at the Apple WWDC, this may get better.
No eye (no video). Apple doesn't have a camera looking at the user. Needed for video calls.
So Skype for iPhone is less than what it could be. Will customer pressure change AT&T's and Apple's attitudes?
UPDATE: 30 March 2009: Added Skype For SIP, Skype for iPhone, Skype co-brand clients, Skype for Asterisk SDK. Changed from eBay extension to eBay toolbar.
I'm in the New York Times coverage of Google Voice. Quoted correctly (yay!) but before my own column on the subject came out (d'oh!). Google has some truly delightful advantages in the race to become the world's largest communications company.
Foresight Institute gets a new president. Skype me (evanwolf) if you want to come to Dr. Hall's Sunday reception in Palo Alto. We'll all be talking molecular manufacturing, nanotechnology and the singularity.
Nokia shares its vision. Smartphones rising. Death of patience. Rewarding engagement. Personal expression. New learning economy. Clickable world. Personal relevance. A good summary of forces driving the interplay between mobile technology, industry dynamics, and human behavior.
Benjamin Leviton seeks VoIP help: "I have a Brekeke SIP proxy server. I am looking for someone to remote on to my desktop, log into its interface and config my carriers with the proxy server. Also check the interface of Polycom phone and make sure it is working properly with the SIP proxy server." Contact: +1-917-273-5808, ben@capitalfinanceusa.com, yahoo IM gcc644@yahoo.com, or skype:levtop.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF for short) petitioned the U.S. Copyright Office to allow people to put whatever software they want on their mobile phones. This would permit working around copy protection.
Computer programs that enable wireless telephone handsets to execute lawfully obtained software applications, where circumvention is accomplished for the sole purpose of enabling interoperability of such applications with computer programs on the telephone handset.
Apple doesn't like this, saying the petition is an attack on the iPhone business model.
Apple is opposed to the proposed Class #1 exemption because it will destroy the technological protection of Apple’s key copyrighted computer programs in the iPhone™ device itself and of copyrighted content owned by Apple that plays on the iPhone, resulting in copyright infringement, potential damage to the device and other potential harmful physical effects, adverse effects on the functioning of the device, and breach of contract. The proponents of the exemption have also not satisfied their burden of proof of showing harm to non-infringing uses of the copyrighted works protected by the technological protection measures on the iPhone.
Specifically, it seeks through the proposed exemption to clear the path for those who would hack the iPhone’s operating system so that a proprietary mobile computing platform protected by copyright can be transformed into one on which any third party application can be run, without taking account of the undesirable consequences that would ensue from the transformation. EFF’s submission offers no proof that this proposed transformation would actually increase innovation or investment in creative works...
In other words, if just anyone can download just any software without Apple's approval, then Apple's stranglehold over the iPhone software market would be broken.
The Mozilla Foundation likes the exemption, saying iPhone users should be free to use Mozilla's browser instead of the one MicrosoftApple includes (consumer choice and control). They also say the exemption promotes open access to the Internet. When users cannot choose their browser software...
The choice in access means is equally important to an open web. today, all consumers do not have a lawful means of exercising their choices, because some devices are tethered to particular software chosen by the hardware vendor. As a result, it limits the means by which users can access and use the Internet. When this happens, consumers' experience of the internet – an open and public resource – is artificially constrained and unnecessarily defined by the hardware vendor because users are required to use that particular software in order to access and use the Internet.
Paraphrasing, when one company controls your browser, that company controls what you see, how you see it, and how you participate. You may trust that company, but you shouldn't have to.
Skype supports the exemption [full text below]. Skype says the freedom to install software powers the freedom to use your phone with different mobile carriers. They say copyright law shouldn't be used to keep people from switching telephone networks (locking) or from using the software they want (blocking).
And there's Skype's obvious self-interest:
Copyright law should not interfere with a user using his or her phone to run Skype and enjoy the benefits of low- or no-cost long-distance and international calling.
The comment period ended 2 February 2009. Next steps are Copyright Office public hearings in the next few months and published decisions later this year.
Full text of Skype's comment on the petition below:
Before the COPYRIGHT OFFICE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS Washington, D.C. In the matter of Exemption to Prohibition on Circumvention of Copyright Protection Systems for Access Control Technologies
Docket No. RM 2008–8 COMMENTS OF SKYPE COMMUNICATIONS S.A.R.L.
Skype Communications S.A.R.L. (“Skype”) hereby files these comments in support of the proposals to exempt from the prohibition on circumvention of access control technologies computer programs that enable individuals to use software applications of their choice on wireless telephone handsets and that enable individuals to use such handsets on wireless networks of their choice (Classes 5A–5D in the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking[1]). As discussed below, allowing consumers to use devices and software applications of their choice on wireless networks maximizes consumer choice and encourages innovation, and should not be restricted by copyright law.
Skype is a global software company whose software application allows its users to communicate with individuals around the world, either for free (when communicating with other Skype users) or at very low rates (when calling PSTN phone numbers). In less than six years since founding, Skype has revolutionized the voice calling market, giving hundreds of millions of users[2] an easy way of staying in touch with friends and loved ones and reducing their long-distance bills (particularly international-calling bills). The Skype software client marries the traditional appeal of voice calling with additional features such as video calls, instant messaging, file transfer, online payment, and so on. Like many software applications that use the Internet, Skype first became popular being used on wired broadband networks; however, its wireless software client is increasingly popular as wireless users seek the benefits offered by Skype including cheaper calls, online presence detection, etc.
Skype strongly supports open wireless broadband networks; i.e., wireless networks on which users can attach (nonharmful) devices of their choice (“no locking”) and use software applications of their choice on such devices (“no blocking”). In February 2007, Skype filed a Petition for Rulemaking[3] with the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) asking that wireless broadband networks be operated under these openness principles, in keeping with the FCC’s Broadband Policy Statement[4] and its seminal Carterfone[5] decision.[6] A few months later, the FCC adopted no locking and no blocking rules to a vital block of spectrum auctioned off for use by wireless broadband networks.[7]
Over the past several months, the nation’s wireless carriers have increasingly embraced the principles of open wireless networks — though their actions so far do not match their words. Wireless carriers and the handset manufacturers they strike deals with continue to employ various means to keep users from using devices and software applications of their choice — from terms of service to the software and firmware loaded on the handsets sold by the carriers. Where carriers and handset manufacturers allow the use of third-party software applications, such as Apple’s iPhone App Store (used on the AT&T network) or Google’s Android (used on the T-Mobile network), the carriers and handset manufacturers reserve the right not to permit the use of software applications that it deems harmful to its business. For example, while it is possible to install adaptations of VoIP applications on some smartphones,[8] carriers’ Terms of Service typically block more robust “end-to-end” VoIP products that use a wireless broadband connection rather than a narrowband connection that uses the carriers’ regular wireless voice minutes. The adapted versions of applications like Skype do not provide wireless consumers with the full range of innovative features that would be available if VoIP application developers were able to harness the full benefits of the wireless data plans that the consumers pay for.
Skype opposes any attempts to restrict the ability of individuals to use devices and software applications of their choice on wireless networks,[9] and, therefore, supports the proposals to exempt from the anti-circumvention provisions:
1. Computer programs that enable wireless telephone handsets to execute lawfully obtained software applications, where circumvention is accomplished for the sole purpose of enabling interoperability of such applications with computer programs on the telephone handset,[10] and
2. Computer programs in the form of firmware or software that enable mobile communication handsets to connect to a wireless communication network, when circumvention is accomplished for the sole purpose of lawfully connecting to a wireless communication network.[11]
These two classes of exemptions will ensure that copyright laws do not interfere with the no blocking and no locking open wireless network principles. Enabling wireless handset users to use their unlocked phone on a network of their choice and to use legally-obtained software applications of their choice on their handsets will ensure that they enjoy the benefits of choice and competition with respect to mobile software applications and handsets — not simply choice among wireless networks. Copyright law should not interfere with a user using his or her phone to run Skype and enjoy the benefits of low- or no-cost long-distance and international calling.
More broadly, users should be able to use their choice of devices and software applications on wireless networks rather than being limited to those devices and applications that are “approved” by the wireless carrier. Allowing end users to choose the devices and applications they use gives them access to a much wider array of devices and applications than would restricting their choices to those offered by wireless carriers acting as gatekeepers — particularly in instances where carriers restrict access to applications, such as Skype, that may threaten part of their business model. An end-to-end network, in which consumer choice is empowered, ensures that innovation occurs at the edges of the network where hundreds if not thousands of application developers and software manufacturers, rather than a handful of wireless carriers, can compete to meet consumer demand.
* * *
For the foregoing reasons, Skype supports the proposals to exempt from the prohibition on circumvention of access control technologies computer programs that enable individuals to use software applications of their choice on wireless telephone handsets and that enable individuals to use such handsets on wireless networks of their choice, i.e. Classes 5A–5D. Skype supports no blocking and no locking policies, and opposes any limitations on these wireless consumer empowerment principles that may arise from the DMCA.
Respectfully submitted,
SKYPE COMMUNICATIONS, S.A.R.L.
Henry Goldberg Devendra T. Kumar GOLDBERG, GODLES, WIENER & WRIGHT 1229 19th St., N.W. Washington, DC 20036 (202) 429-4900 – Telephone (202) 429-4912 – Facsimile Of Counsel to Skype Communications, S.A.R.L.
Christopher Libertelli, Senior Director, Government and Regulatory Affairs – North America SKYPE COMMUNICATIONS S.A.R.L. 6e etage, 22/24 boulevard Royal, Luxembourg, L-2449 Luxembourg
Dated: February 2, 2009
Footnotes:
Exemption to Prohibition on Circumvention of Copyright Protection Systems for Access Control Technologies, Docket No. RM 2008-8, 73 Fed. Reg. 79,425, 79,427 (2008).
Skype has over 400 million registered users worldwide.
Skype Communications S.A.R.L. Petition to Confirm a Consumer’s Right to Use Internet Communications Software and Attach Devices to Wireless Networks, RM-11361 (filed Feb. 20, 2007) (“Skype Petition”).
Appropriate Framework for Broadband Access to the Internet over Wireline Facilities, CC Docket No. 02-33, Appropriate Regulatory Treatment for Broadband Access to the Internet Over Cable Facilities, CS Docket No. 02-52, Policy Statement, FCC 05-151 (rel. Sep. 23, 2005).
Use of the Carterfone Device in Message Toll Telephone Service, 13 FCC 2d 420 (1968).
The Skype Petition remains pending at the FCC.
See Service Rules for the 698-746, 747-762 and 777-792 MHz Bands, Second Report and Order, WT Docket No. 06-150, FCC 07-132, at 88, ¶ 189–230 (rel. Aug. 10, 2007) (“700 MHz Order”).
The only exceptions to open wireless networks should be for devices that harm the network and for restrictions on the use of software applications that result from reasonable network management practices.
73 Fed. Reg. at 79,427, Class 5A.
73 Fed. Reg. at 79,427, Class 5C. Note that Classes 5B and 5D are almost identical to Class 5C and are treated as such in these comments.
Truphone, the internet telephony application for mobiles, has added AOL Instant Messenger to the list of IM systems it can interact with. Now, in addition to Google Talk, Skype, Windows Live Messenger, and Yahoo, you can chat with your AIM buddies while on Truphone on an iPod Touch or iPhone.
Truphone is also set to make another announcement tomorrow that they are calling 'major'. I'll post about it when I get more info from Mobile World Congress.
Skype Journal columnist Jason Harris, engages communities for corporations and explores internet telephony, mobile technology, and the leaders who bring them to market on his Techcraver blog and on Twitter.
Skype's bundling free screen sharing into Skype's software will popularize the feature to hundreds of millions of people. This makes the market for online conferencing bigger.
The bundling will also kill the freemium business model (try our free version, upgrade to our posh version) conferencing companies use to get customers. This will hurt the following Skype developers directly:
Back in mid-2005, Bill Campbell asked "Does Skype eat its children?" when Skype competed with presence developers with Skypeweb. Those developers abandoned Skype. Since then Skype competed with video developers, who've abandoned Skype. And with Outlook integration developers. And with Salesforce integration developers. And with mobile developers.
Skype's ecosystem is littered with the bleached bones of third-party software developers. They filled gaps in Skype's product line. They made Skype's network more valuable. They bet their jobs on Skype's partner program being safe from Skype itself.
Clearly, a bad bet.
Skype desktop sharing will be wildly successful. Building it into Skype clients and putting it one or two clicks to add sharing to a call makes it 10 to 100 times more convenient than other systems. Ubiquity will change the way people think about desktop sharing the way ubiquity is changing how people think about video calling.
WebEx-style meeting, sales, training, tech-support, and webinar services comprise a multibillion dollar industry. Skype desktop sharing will be disruptive to the industry: vastly cheaper, more convenient, more social. We'll hunt for market share stats this year.
So while this announcement is great for Skype, the choice will chill investment by software development partners. Platforms must be safe, trusted, with manageable risk. And platforms must foster creativity, innovation, and opportunity.
Skype's choice subverts developer trust. That's one hell of a brand note.
Tonight out at the "ShowStoppers" event at MacWorld in San Francisco, Skype announced the new 2.8 Beta for Mac OS X. The new version will apparently be available for download tomorrow, January 6, 2009, from Skype's website. [NOTE: I will update this post with the download link when it becomes available.]
Continuing Skype's rather fragmented product strategy, they have rolled out some new features in this 2.8 beta release that will at least stop us Mac users from whining about Windows users always getting the good stuff first. Here's the quick list of what Skype notes is in this release:
Skype Access
Screen Sharing
Improved chat management: ability to sort chats in the drawer and set priorities to chats
Quick Add: much easier to add people to chats
Mood message chat: mood message updates from your friends as chat messages
Large avatars: 256x256 pixels
Hidden avatars in incoming contact requests
Ability to add your own notes to contacts
Courtesy of Skype's PR team, I've had a chance to play with the 2.8 beta for a couple of weeks and have these thoughts below...
SKYPE ACCESS
Probably the largest "new" feature is "Skype Access", a service that lets you go to any of the 100,000 Boingo Wi-Fi hotspots and - using Skype - connect to the Boingo hotspot. When you connect, you pay on a per-minute basis and the fee (roughly 20 cents per minute) is deducted from your Skype Credit. You do not have to pay the Boingo monthly fee. You do not have to pay any hourly or daily fees.
Judging from the news release and pre-release info, Skype is immensely proud of this feature but I will be honest and say it does little for me. I just don't use Wi-Fi hotspots as much while traveling (especially now that I'm paying for a wireless broadband adapter). However, I can see how this could be of value. If all you wanted to do was crack open your Mac and send some email, this gives you a great way to do that on a per-minute basis. If I were a heavy user of Wi-Fi hotspots, I'd want to do the math to figure out if it would just be cheaper to buy a monthly Boingo access.
Regardless, it's an interesting move for Skype to get into the business of connecting you to Internet access.
SCREEN SHARING
The coolest feature of the 2.8 beta is a "screensharing" feature where you can share either your entire screen or just a portion of your screen with the Skype user on the other end. Now, this works with all other versions of Skype because it replaces your video stream with the screen sharing. So a Mac Skype user can share their screen with Windows and Linux users.... which is pretty cool.
It's hard to show in a blog post, but if you watch my screencast about the 2.8 beta, you can see it in action:
You can share either your entire desktop or just a section of your screen. You can also resize the section you are sharing while you are in the middle of sharing. When you stop sharing, you just flip back to showing your video.
CHAT PRIORITIZATION
By far the most useful feature I've found in the 2.8 beta is the ability to set the "priority" of a chat session - and then sort your chat sessions by priority in the Mac's "drawer" way of displaying chat sessions. I can just control-click a chat (either a private or public chat) and then go down to the "Set Priority" menu choice:
You can then sort the chats based on their priority using the drop-down menu at the top of the "drawer":
You can also sort based on title or date. Personally I've found the Sort by Priority to be very useful when you have, as I do, a zillion chats open at any one time. (And yes, I report to RJ, our CTO, so his chat gets the highest priority! ;-) )
MOOD MESSAGE CHAT - AND FOLLOWING (like Twitter)
Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the 2.8 beta is the new "Mood Messages" pseudo-chat that you can enable in the Advanced part of the Skype Preferences:
Once you enable the "Mood Message Chat", you get a new chat window that opens up that shows you the mood messages of all of your contacts:
It also very nicely lets you set your mood message simply by typing in the window as you would to any other chat window. This is quite nice for someone like me who almost never changes my mood message in the regular window.
This actually makes Skype mood messages useful to me.
However, because of that other option that says "Show iTunes song in my mood message", you rapidly wind up seeing that a whole lot of people have that option checked and your Mood Message Chat rapidly fills with updates of music people listen to. What if you don't want to see their updates? Well, Skype has made it so that you can "follow" updates from your contacts through a simple menu choice:
The down side here is that if you enable the Mood Message Chat, you are following all your contacts by default and have to go through and "unfollow" (i.e. uncheck the menu choice) people you don't want to follow. It would be great if Skype had a "follow by default" or a "stop following all contacts" choice... something along those lines to let you control who you are following.
The intriguing aspect here is that this enables you to turn Skype mood messages into the kind of status updates that you typically have in Twitter, Facebook, or any of the other zillion services offering status updates. The great thing here is that it is simply another Skype chat window like all your other chats. (Of course, you can get a Skype chat for Twitter using "twitter4skype", but this is now with Skype mood messages.)
I think, though, for it to reach any kind of real usage, you need more people to enable this feature (it is off by default) and actually start using it - and for that it also needs to be on more platforms.
[As a tease, I'll mention that there is a way to integrate this mood message chat with Twitter, so anything I type there also shows up in my Twitter stream... but I'll write about that in a separate blog post as it's not directly tied to the 2.8 beta release. Soon...]
QUICK ADD
Another nice feature is the ability to quickly add someone to a chat through a button at the top of the chat window. You click on the window and start typing in a contact's name:
Before you could always drag-and-drop a contact from your main Skype window into a chat, but now you can use this quick add button. It is particularly useful if you have a large number of Skype contacts.
NOTES ON CONTACTS
Another useful feature is the ability to add private notes to each of your Contacts. So you could store information about how you know the person... their interests... basically anything you want as it is a free-form text field:
What's not yet clear to me is where these notes are stored. Are they accessible through multiple Skype clients if you were logged in on multiple machines? Or are they tied to the machine where you create the Notes? I'm guessing that they are stored with the local client like chat histories are.... but I'd need to have multiple installations of the 2.8 beta to really know this.
OTHER FEATURES
Skype also added a few other features:
New set of icons
Large avatars: You can now have images up to 256x256 pixels in size.
Hidden avatars in incoming contact requests - so you aren't exposed to images that might be offensive.
There are undoubtedly other features that we'll find as we work with it more.
CONCLUSION
So with this 2.8 Beta for Mac OS X, Skype provides some interesting new capabilities. I can see the screen sharing being quite useful to show people what's on my screen. The chat prioritization is great for heavy chat users like me. The possibilities of actually making the Mood Messages useful intrigue me. Frequent Wi-Fi hotspot users may find the Skype Access feature useful and economical.
All in all, it's a great evolution of the Skype client for Mac OS X.
I do wish, though, as I've discussed before, that Skype's product strategy weren't so fragmented. Sure, as a Mac user, it's fun for a few minutes to have some features that Windows users don't have... but that fun rapidly fades when I can share my desktop with a Windows user but they can't share their's. And they almost never use the Mood Messages because it's not convenient to do so.
Perhaps most annoyingly, I am currently in a position where I am helping some Windows users get started with Skype and so I'm trying to help them with their Skype client... when mine is markedly different. It's a frustrating experience. I do hope Skype's new management can help converge the product streams so that the user experience (and technical support experience) is closer between platforms (while, yes, acknowledging that platforms have UI/behavior differences). We'll see.
In the meantime, I'm going to enjoy using this new beta on my Mac and seeing what else might be inside the release.
Again, Skype indicates that the 2.8 beta will be available tomorrow, January 6, 2009, for download for Mac OS X users.
I'll look forward to reading what you all think...
At MacWorld's Showstoppers event this evening Skype announced Skype for Mac 2.8 beta, with two major new features as well as several minor ones. Screen Sharing
The most impressive feature is a form of basic screen sharing. Either a segment of your screen or the full screen is converted into a virtual webcam such that the screen can be viewed in any Skype client via the Skype video channel. While only a Mac can currently be a source for this screen sharing it can be viewed on any Windows, Mac or Linux client as video.
Skype for Mac's screen sharing feature is sufficient to support discussion issues as a complement to a voice and/or chat conversation; it is NOT by any means a replacement for fully featured desktop or application sharing offerings such as Yugma, InnerPass or IBM's Lotus Sametime Unyte. It's "just" screen sharing. In fact, it is one of two options on the Skype for Mac's "Share" button, the other being file sharing/transfer.
Below is an example of a full screen image of a shared MacBook screen as seen in a detached Skype video window on my Windows laptop.
Skype Access
The second major feature, Skype Access, provides WiFi access for your MacBook or MacBook Pro via any Boingo access point. While I'm told it has been tested at many of the over 100,000 Boingo hotspots worldwide, I could not get it to work at a local Canadian Starbucks listed as a Boingo hotspot location. But then, this is still beta (and the problem may be with Boingo's interface with Bell Mobility).
More importantly is to look at the "use case" for Skype Access. Cost for using Skype Access over Boingo is US$0.22/€0.16/C$0.23 per minute using Skype credits.
Within a user's home country, Skype Access is probably more expensive than local alternatives; this is certainly the case in Canada. However, I can see the value if I am outside the home country and wanting to make Skype/SkypeOut calls, check email or do some web browsing at airports, restaurants, coffee shops and other Boingo hotspots as an alternative to much higher cost roaming wireless calls (for instance roaming U.S. to Canada on Rogers runs at $1.75 per minute) or $40 per day Internet access charges at some European hotels.
With unlimited use Boingo subscriptions at $21.95/month for North America or $59/month Global, Skype Access is more appropriate for the occasional traveler as opposed to the hardened road warrior.
It reminds me of the use case for PamFax where you can send faxes directly from, say, your hotel room for about $0.20 per page while avoiding a hotel's much higher $1.00/page charge for faxing. One other common feature between Skype Access and PamFax: both use Skype credits as the primary currency. Other features in Skype for Mac 2.8 beta:
Skype for Mac 2.8 continues the use of a "drawer" attached to a Skype chat window; from the list of active chat sessions shown in the drawer you can select which session you want to view. But now there are three levels of prioritization available for those chat sessions. In addition chats can be sorted by name or date/time.
The process for adding contacts to a chat session now simply involves clicking the "Add a Contact" button and entering the added contact's name.
Your Contacts' Mood Messages can be tracked via a "Mood Message" chat session. While this can currently only be initiated on Skype for Mac 2.8, your mood message chat session will show up as a chat session on, say, a Windows client logged into the same account. Neat for keeping up-to-date on mood message changes, especially when a mood message provides location or reference URL information; it provides a Twitter-like experience.
Add notes to contacts: when you go into a Contact's profile there is a separate tab for entering personal notes about that contact.
Dan York, with a lot more Skype for Mac experience than I have had (I just acquired a MacBook ten days ago), has provided a much more detailed review of all the new features He has also produced an excellent You Tube video for his Emerging Tech Talk series:
Jim Courtney and I are heading to Las Vegas for the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show. We'll cover Skype's press conference and see what interviews we can arrange. We'll also look for members of the Skype ecosystem to show us their latest. And for close-ups with innovators and Skype's rivals.
I'm also going to the "Jobless" MacWorld Expo in San Francisco Tuesday morning.
Please share your tips with us. Email, twitter, or Skype Me. Love to see you there.
Gear to pack for CES:
Digital camera, Digital camera, Flip MinoHD, desk tripod, monopod, batteries, audio recorder, iPod, iPod cable, iPod earbuds, usb cable extender, Ethernet cable extender, power squid, laptop, laptop power brick, laptop headset, webcam, mouse, memory stick, usb hub, n800, n800 power, mobile phone, mobile power, ziplock bags.
Skype brings back Skypecasts with a new feature: with one click, introduce spammers, con artists, and sexy webcam girls to each other.
Skype for Neocortex. Mood based on serotonin levels. Very high quality audio and video by tapping directly into the optic nerve and auditory system. Some side effects.
Skype for Lovers. Extension of Skype 4.1. Just one buddy to dial. No interruptions. Ultrasimple UI: click the heart.
Skype's new platforms have more active developers than BT Ribbit. More than Google Android. Fewer than Apple iPhone.
Litigation. 1530 sleep deprived patients sue Skype for keeping them up late.
Google Central will be exciting.
Google Video Talk adds multiparty video.
The Emerging Communications Conference (eComm) will sell out.
Yahoo! fires thousands of people. Decimates the messenger team. Hires a new executive team. Reorganizes. Again.
Skype introduces multiparty video. The kids love it. WebEx hates it.
Skype for Asterisk gets video call support. Dating sites love it.
Skype for WoW builds on Skype for Asterisk. The raiders love it.
Skypephone comes to the Americas via partnership with with US mobile carriers. Wal-Mart will carry it. Nothing for Canada.
3 INQ1 sales will cut into 3 Skypephone sales in the UK.
U.S. Mobile Carterfone rules (to free mobile phones from carrier contracts) will be considered by the FCC.
VoIP falls from telecom jargon. Even VoIP bloggers stop using the term. The public starts using Skype as a generic name for internet talk.
eBay's auction businesses will do well in tough times, better in the second half of the year.
Skype will make $630 million in FY2009.
Peak Skype usage will top 18 million simultaneous users.
If I ever had any doubt about the value of Twitter as a commercial social networking tool, it evaporated this weekend as a result of following some Tweets on the subject of smartphones that appeared this weekend. They certainly provide an independent perspective on issues that I'm sure others are wondering about:
Luca Filigheddu has just gone through the process of evaluating the BlackBerry Bold and iPhone over the past few weeks. Saturday he sent me a Twitter direct message to say that he had acquired a BlackBerry Bold; after he had had a few hours experience Saturday I see this on his Twitter feed:And when I came home yesterday evening I see that my acquaintance Olivier Chaine has put up this Tweet (earlier yesterday I had suggested, in response to his request for smartphone Twitter client recommendations, that he look at Slandr.Net as a mobile platform Twitter client):
First I would suggest that the mini-computer industry died many years ago, to be replaced by the microcomputer era, especially server banks. Trust me, I spent a major part of my career relying on mini-computers. I think I would need a backpack to be mobile with a mini-computer.
So I'll assume Mark is really looking to have a mobile microcomputer or PC experience on a smartphone. Having had several months' experience with both an iPhone and a BlackBerry Bold, here are my criteria for a mobile microcomputer or, more aptly, a "Laptop for the Hip or Purse":
Minimum 480 x 320 graphics display.
Full QWERTY keyboard.
Web browser capable of supporting PC-type browsing.
Supports "Cut & Paste" (of significant value more often than one would initially imagine until it's not available)
View and edit MS Office documents (Word, PowerPoint, Excel) with potential to add document creation.
Supports video recording and MMS
Background processing (especially after experiencing both Truphone for BlackBerry and Truphone for iPhone)
Supports true Instant Messaging in background while running other applications
Equipped for memory upgrades through a removable memory card.
Supports both Both WiFi and 3G wireless protocols
A great set of specifications but the key question here is: "How does it change the user experience?". In particular does it eliminate the "urge" to turn on, or always carry, a laptop to keep up-to-date with real time activities?
As I have mentioned elsewhere, after a month's experience with the BlackBerry Bold, I found I had lost that tugging "urge" to turn on my laptop for keeping current with real time (and often mission critical) information. This change did not just involve email and web browsing but also Instant Messaging, Twitter and attached document editing.. RIM would do well to position Bold as a "Laptop for the Hip or Purse", bypassing all the technical comparisons and moving on to succinctly promoting Bold based on the actual user experience.
I like my iPhone for many of its personal information delivery features; it gives me a feel for what is appealing about the iPhone. I can find Toronto Transit streetcar times, do unit conversions, find the nearest Tim Horton's or Starbucks; it has lots of great information delivery features. On the media side it's definitely an extension of the iPod although it does not have the full audio performance of the Bold.
However, a mobile microcomputer the iPhone is NOT! Yes it uses a modified Mac OS; it uses Safari browser; it has an iPod variant.
However, I find myself turning to my Bold much more often than my iPhone for real two way interactivity. Just as important as the keyboard is the ability to track instant messaging sessions, whether on iSkoot (for Skype chat), Palringo or BlackBerry Messenger in background while carrying out other activities. On the subject of low cost international calling I find I can make much more use of Truphone for BlackBerry than Truphone for iPhone (that's the subject of a future post).
I am encountering more and more acquaintances who have no use for a touch keyboard; certainly my typing error rate is much worse on the iPhone. For this reason alone I consider the iPhone to be a very good one-way information delivery device whereas BlackBerry is a true two-way communications device.
As for applications, suffice it to say that over the next six months, where feasible, business savvy developers will publish applications running on both devices. For instance, The Hockey News has just released mobile applications for both the BlackBerry and iPhone. I mentioned Truphone above; Mobile Google apps are another example.
Keeping up with iTunes music via BlackBerry MediaSync is a trivial operation. Frankly from some video and audio streaming experiences I have had, BlackBerry Bold provides superior stereo audio performance even without earbuds or a headset.
Bottom line: when I leave my home office or hotel room with my Bold, I no longer have to take my laptop to keep current.
Yes, at the moment, the iPhone browser a superior user experience but rest assured RIM is not ignoring the issue. At this point the Bold's browser issues have sometimes been frustrating but they not been an inhibition to my browsing activities in any major way - I still get the information I am seeking. The critical parameter here is the 480 pixel display width, which is sufficient to view most websites and weblogs without the need for horizontal scrolling via a ribbon bar. When RIM releases carrier-specific versions of their upgraded operating system - including browser enhancements, the Bold will live up to its full potential as "A Laptop for the Hip or Purse".
(As for pricing on Rogers, both the Bold and iPhone are C$199 with a three year contract.)
In future posts I'll cover in more detail some of the issues mentioned above, including my Truphone evaluation on each device, some very amazing real time video and audio experiences, the range of third party applications available on each device and why both background processing and WiFi is becoming critical to any smartphone.
And, Mark, if you're looking for a mobile microcomputer, I would suggest serious consideration of the BlackBerry Bold. As a final determinant, have a look at the Bold's display - it's been universally acclaimed as "stunning"; I can only agree.
In closing, can we expect Skype to include BlackBerry as one of their supported platforms for Skype for Mobile? Or will iSkoot improve on their user interface to take advantage of some new BlackBerry developer tools? (Most Skype executives I meet are sporting a BlackBerry - it's supported by eBay IT.)
Update: Luca published a post this afternoon, A Bold New Experience, and asks about his Tweet above: "Why Did I Say That?"
1) Always on Experience: the BB is offering me a realtime always-on experience never found in any device I used before 2) Multitasking - It lets you receive IMs while writing an email or making a phone call, for example 3) Stunning display 4) Wide availability of apps 5) Crazy speed 6) Great usability
2008 is turning out to be a great year for Skype growth (real users), nearly matching the record year of 2006. In my view, the patterns of Skype growth are affected by:
The popularity (name recognition) of the software itself... in comparison to communications alternatives.
The capability of computers and mobile communication devices.
The quality and capability of the software for multi-modal communication... in comparison to communications alternatives.
The state of the world economy
The availability of broadband
So for 2009 here is how things are shaping up.
Skype has no discernible marketing program. It never has. Skype relies almost entirely upon word-of-mouth. If Skype were to introduce a marketing program, the opportunity for growth could be significant. There seems to be zero prospect for such a marketing plan.
The power of computers will grow marginally. The capability of mobile devices, especially smartphones, will grow hugely. The latter is a real opportunity for Skype if it can develop quality software for the most popular platforms such as the iPhone, BlackBerry and Nokia N- and E-series. On the other hand, if the world economy sinks, then few people will be buying those new computers and mobile devices. Overall, this is not going to affect 2009 growth significantly.
The overall quality and capability of Skype client software will improve marginally. Aside from bringing out client software for mobile platforms, upcoming improvements in the client (especially video and audio) will affect Skype growth only on the margins.
Because Skype/Skype calling is free, and both SkypeIn and SkypeOut are very inexpensive, it is reasonable to assume that a poor economy is good for Skype in terms of its market share of communications. However, the overall market for communications may well decline in a bad economy. So while a declining economy is not good for Skype, it is less bad than for Skype's competitors.
The availability of broadband is a very important factor in the growth of Skype's "real users".
Summary: Skype growth (as measured by "real users") will continue on its current trajectory (averaging around 830,000 new "real users" per month). That is a huge number by anyone's standard. As in prior years, growth will be strong in the first quarter, slack in the second and third quarters, and strong in the fourth quarter.
Truphone's announcements last week overcame a significant carrier resistance barrier to using VoIP-enabled services to reduce international calling costs. The key secret here was that it required the combination of Truphone's iPhone and iPod Touch applications along with the Apple Application program that leverages Apple's established carrier relationships to break this barrier.On Friday I was finally able to complete provisioning of Truphone on my iPhone. It happened at this time for three reasons:
The association of my original Truphone number and account with a Nokia N95 handset and the "416" number I eventually transferred to my iPhone whose acquisition as an upgrade on my carrier account minimize my iPhone costs over the term of the three year contract.
The original iPhone application only supported outbound calling; I would have lost the Truphone inbound calling feature I had on the N95.
For this reason I left Truphone on my N95 (using a deactivated SIM and my home office WiFi access point) pending the arrival of a Truphone for iPhone application and service that supported both inbound and outbound calling.
Recall also that the original Truphone for iPhone only allowed calls over WiFi access points with no ability to pass them through the underlying 3G wireless carrier. Truphone's two announcements last week addressed three issues:
Over the course of the past week it has become possible to make low cost international calls from any iPhone or iPod Touch mobile device worldwide. Truphone has demonstrated how the underlying service provider can can eliminate the need to have a multitude of individual "carrier-service provider agreements" with the 79 carriers currently offering the iPhone worldwide. Yet carriers still benefit through increased local minutes used to provide the connection to/from Truphone calls. To quote from Ted Wallingford's "Heartburn Chuckle: The telecom industry can blame itself":
The Carriers
The carriers are firms like AT&T, Windstream, Verizon, BT, and so on. Their obsession with the billing unit (the almighty minute) has made them helpless to see the possibilities of a software-rich, application-based global ecosystem. Consequently, the most successful apps to arrive on the carriers’ networks, the ones most embraced by the public, overwhelmingly have one purpose: to steal billable minutes from the carriers. The innovation disappeared and the scrappy new players in the market, the ones with the power to transform the public’s thinking about telecom, instead got stuck doing the same old thing the big telecoms do to put bread on the table: bill minutes. [Author's italics]
It was the second part of this announcement that is most significant. Previously VoIP-enabled services, such as 3's Skypephone, required working with individual carriers to establish the appropriate business and operating agreements. However, in one move, Truphone was able to leverage Apple's relationships with 79 carriers worldwide to bring about commitment free international calling. Apple, through its Application Program has become a disintermediator, facilitating a business model disruption, once again.
In a future post, once I've had some more Truphone for iPhone experience, I'll do a comparison of services available over Skype and over Truphone. But one obvious difference: Truphone is about voice conversations only; Skype is about voice and text conversations.
At the same time Truphone announced a new version of their iPhone application. Whereas the version released at the time of the Apple App Store launch back in July only supported outbound calling over WiFi access points, the new release not only supports inbound calling to your iPhone number but also makes outbound calls via the 3G carrier networks that offer the iPhone.
Innovation driven competition in delivering low cost international calling services appears to be heating up during these challenging economic times - at least for calls originating in your "home" calling country or area code(s). Here's a brief summary of what is evolving:
We've seen the evolution of two architectures for making VoIP-enabled calling from mobile devices; it's all a matter of where the calling party's Skype (or VoIP client) session is opened up - directly on the device or on a dedicated hosted server. This leads to two other considerations:
Carrying the voice portion of the call from the mobile device into the network cloud, either via the carrier's robust and proven (GSM) voice channel or over via a WiFi access point
The need to support Skype's instant messaging (chat and presence); this always occurs as a data activity
VoIP Client on the Mobile Device; VoIP over WiFi
Skype for Windows Mobile places the VoIP client directly onto the device. As a result the device must handle the "VoIP processing" to generate the packets that are transmitted over the supporting data network (either a carrier's 3G network or via a WiFi access point.) As mentioned previously, it places heavy demands on the device's resources, especially the processor (running at much lower speeds than on a PC) and the battery.
Truphone's original voice offering also runs on the device (usually a Nokia Smartphone). While both Skype for Windows Mobile and Truphone can run over either WiFi access points or a 3G network, it is strongly advised to use these only over WiFi access points to have a reliable, robust, high quality voice service. For instance, the Skype for Windows Mobile download page says:
Log into Skype from any WiFi zone to make free calls and send instant messages to anyone else on Skype, anywhere in the world, any day of the week.
WiFi connection or 3G/2G data connection (we cannot guarantee voice quality over 3G/2G. You may also be liable to additional data charges so please check with your operator before using)
Truphone's original iPhone outbound calling offering was also only available using the iPhone's WiFi capability; however, details of their architecture were never revealed.
Accessing VoIP via a Wireless Carrier
Over the past year we have seen the rise of several services that use the alternate architecture where a call is placed via a local access point to a hosted server that then opens up a Skype client. The server-based Skype client then completes the call as a Skype-to-Skype call.
While originally pioneered by iSkoot, a service using this architecture, such as Skype Lite beta, makes a call to a SIP Gateway server via a local point of presence while data about the call is concurrently sent via the underlying data network to a hosted Mobile Gateway. This dedicated gateway then sets up a Skype-to-Skype call between the SIP Gateway — now connected to your cell phone — and the destination Skype contact. Skype chat messages can also be exchanged concurrently over the data network. We are now seeing various offerings using this architecture:
The highly successful Skypephone offered by 3 in nine countries.
iSkoot providing service for a wide range of phones including BlackBerry, Nokia and T-Mobile's G-1.
Truphone Anywhere: when Truphone found they could not offer a highly reliable service over 3G networks (largely due to device resource considerations), they launched Truphone Anywhere that allows Truphone calls to be made over a 2G (GSM/EDGE) or 3G (UMTS/HSPA) voice/data network as well as over WiFi access points.
Skype for Mobile beta - Skype's first attempt to go beyond Skype for Windows Mobile onto other platforms such as Nokia N-Series and E-Series devices. This never got out of the beta phase; while you could use Skype chat anywhere, the voice service was only to be available in a limited number of countries (that did not overlap with countries where Skypephone was available).
Skype Lite beta: building on the Skype for Mobile beta experience to a service that supports not only smartphones but also over 90 cell phones that support a Java client and include basic web browsing and data capability. According to the Skype Lite page it appears that Skype is working with carriers in ten countries to support this service.
Key features of these server-hosted VoIP client services:
They are most cost effective when calling from your home country or local calling area. You could incur long distance or, when outside your home country, roaming charges that would run up quite quickly.
An unlimited or high cap data plan minimizes costs associated with using these services.
Only Skype provides a full Instant Messaging capability covering both chat and presence. Some Truphone offerings have shown support for SMS messaging.
Calls to Skype or Truphone contacts are no additional cost beyond the "local" connection cost.
Calls to the PSTN, such as SkypeOut calls, require Skype or Truphone subscriptions or credits.
Calls to mobile numbers outside U.S. and Canada will still invoke the charges incurred in "caller pays" mobile services.
Why only the cost of a "local" call? Your cell phone makes a call to a local number which puts the call through to the service's SIP Gateway. At this point you connect into a Skype-to-Skype call for which there are no termination charges involved as a result of Skype's unique (and secure) peer-to-peer architecture. The same applies to Truphone where Truphone-to-Truphone calls are free.
This Skype Lite beta announcement portends that we could be seeing mobile Skype-to-Skype calling, along the lines of 3's popular Skypephone service in nine countries, become available to mobile customers having a much broader range of cell phones and in up to ten additional countries.
One other service that can be accessed from any phone is Mobivox. However, there you have to build up and manage your address book online such that VoxGirl can help you make your calls; it does not access your mobile phone address book. It's purely a voice service with no messaging component (other than using SMS to facilitate setting up calls under certain circumstances).
While we're getting a first step in driving down mobile costs for international calling, the next step needs to be finding a user-friendly way to drive out roaming costs. MaxRoam and Truphone's SIM4Travel are starting to offer some hope on this front; however, at the moment their costs for USA-Canada calls are much more than my Rogers roaming charge. The winners will feature not only lower costs but a very friendly user interface, interacting with the device address book, that also provides the most complete ranges of services in terms of coverage and complementary conversation modes, such as IM.
When calling into an enterprise of any reasonable size, we all love to navigate our way through those pesky (and repetitive) enterprise auto-attendant services or phone trees that go through menu after menu to connect you directly to an appropriate destination service or person. NOT!
At last spring's eComm 2008 we first learned about Fonolo, a "Deep Dialing" service that bypasses phone trees to connect you directly with the destination extension you really want to reach. I provided a detailed description of Fonolo, incorporating a video, on Web Worker Daily three weeks ago. While Fonolo has been in private beta for a few months, today it is launching a fully open public beta.
I asked Fonolo CEO Shai Berger, aside from the open public beta announcement, what have they learned from the private beta and what other experience have they gained during this period? His response:
Fonolo has grown to provide Deep Dialing for over 300 companies from 150 six weeks ago.
They are learning what is required to scale the service; it's not the web portal that presents an issue but rather the scalability of the service itself where they need to be supporting several hundred concurrent calls over the phone network in real time. "Every call involves a "deep dial" which is processor intensive and uses voice recognition to make sure they get to the right place within an enterprise's menu."
From the beta test experience, "We've learned that 'Deep Dialing' has tapped into a vein of consumer frustration. We get lots of fan mail! We've also learned that the companies people want to call are concentrated on a few verticals, in particular wireless providers and ISPs. We're going to disclose our "top 10" enterprise category list at some point in the future."
What are the goals for the open public beta? "Watch how the service scales with usage and watch usage patterns. This is particularly important in helping to determine the structure of premium services."
But there's more to the Fonolo story than simply "Deep Dialing". With the data collected during the beta periods and the services they are considering, they will also be able to provide a service to call centers to assist them with improving their productivity. This would include providing data on where users get lost in a menu, hang up in frustration or end up at an inappropriate destination. Martin Geddes foresees potential for Fonolo as having more benefit for call centers than for consumers; check out Fonolo's role in a discussion led by Martin at the recent Telco 2.0 Executive Brainstorm conference in London, U.K.
… [but] who benefits more: the consumer, or the call centre? We think that it’s the latter, and the consumer is the price-sensitive side. The call centre wants the maximum rate of self-care, high customer satisfaction, and the web site offers the ability to do all kinds of enhanced multi-modal interactions that a 0-9*# keypad can’t do well… Therefore in our two-sided market world, we’d get telcos to distribute and promote this tool (on their fixed, mobile and on-device portals). They would then sell these enhanced capabilities to call centres.”
At the recent Mobilize 08 Shai announced the Fonolo application for iPhone, to become available early in 2009; Fonolo was awarded the Judges Prize at this event's LaunchPad segment. And, given the target user base, I'm sure they'll be looking into putting a BlackBerry application on their roadmap.
Symantec is one of the recent additions to their enterprise directory. I could have used Fonolo a month ago when I was having an issue with upgrading a Norton security product and had to make multiple calls to the same support line to resolve the issue. A mouse click and getting a call-back would have been a lot simpler and less time consuming than pushing "9" four times - interspersed with tedious voice directions - to get to the appropriate service personnel. .(The good news is that the issue did get resolved.)
Over the past year one of the leading IP-based voice service offerings for low cost international calling from wireless smartphones has been Truphone whose service primarily runs over WiFi access points. Their Truphone Anywhere service, launched last spring, provides an option for making calls via 3G networks using a combination of the data channel and voice channel in a manner similar to iSkoot's architecture where the caller's VoIP client resides on the service provider's server(s). When the Apple App store launched last summer Truphone launched an iPhone 3G application that once again offers the ability to make outbound calls over a WiFi access point.
One more user experience consideration: a key user friendly Truphone feature is its complete Address Book integration; when using Truphone on a N95 8GB I can simply go to my standard address book (synchronized with my Outlook Contacts), select a contact, select a phone number for the contact, press the green "Call" button and initiate a call over Truphone.
So it was not a total surprise, with this experience, that today Truphone announced a new Truphone application for the second generation iPod Touch, which supports a headset with a microphone. But it's not simply about making low cost phone calls. Support for chat and social networking has also been included. The client does require the use of a microphone adapter; while available elsewhere, Truphone does plan to offer one as well. From the press release:
Truphone for iPod Touch will become a one-stop-shop social hub with the following features coming soon:
Calling to landlines (PSTN) at low cost (simply set yourself up with a Truphone account);
Instant messaging to Skype and MSN (free);
Calling to Skype users (free);
Calling to MSN users (free);
Check and set facilities for Twitter (free);
Check and set facilities for Facebook (free).
Contrary to what many in the media are saying, the client that resides on the iPod Touch is a thin client, not a VoIP client. This client supplies a Truphone server with the information required to open and set up a VoIP client on a Truphone server which, in turn, completes the call via a VoIP connection.
What can we envision from this announcement for future releases of Truphone for Nokia, BlackBerry, iPhone 3G and Windows Mobile devices? Beyond the calling and SMS features currently available in their respective Truphone clients I expect we'll be seeing:
Truphone access to Skype IM and calls to Skype contacts, as well as to Microsoft Live contacts
Facebook access, including possibly the ability to import Facebook contacts into your phone address book
Following Twitter messages
In addition, Truphone is a Voxbone iNum partner; initially Truphone for iPod Touch users will be assigned an iNum "883" country code number. I have also recently observed use of iNum "883" numbers on iotum's Calliflower conferencing service and at Mobivox. Using Skype today, I confirmed that placing a Skype call to an iNum "883" number results in a SkypeOut call with the appropriate charges.
Looks like we're about to see some interesting innovation coming from Truphone over the next few months.
This valuator compares four attributes: brand strength through differentiation and relevance, brand stature through esteem and knowledge.
Here's how they define the terms:
D. Energized Differentiation. A brand's unique meaning, with motion and direction. Relates to margins and cultural currency.
R. Relevance. How important the brand is to you. Relates to consideration and trial.
E. Esteem. How you regard the brand. Relates to perceptions of quality and loyalty.
K. Knowledge. An intimate understanding of the brand. Relates to awareness and consumer experience.
So I compared three global brands we know and love: Skype, the Apple iPhone, and Google.
You can see they each score well on Energized Differentiation. There's nothing else like Skype, iPhone, or Google.
Skype and iPhone are both much less relevant to the average consumer than Google. Google is well understood and used by many more people.
Esteem and Knowledge both show a similar pattern: the brands with more experience and time have more stature in the minds of consumers.
The BAV compares strength to stature in the next chart. You want to be in the upper-right quadrant with Google and eBay.
Skype is moderate strength, low stature. So while Skype is defining its unique value proposition well, people don't feel they know or respect it. That will come with education, hands on, and time.
What three things should consumers learn about Skype in 2009? What can Skype do with its product strategy to move from the upper left to the upper right?
Fring and EQO and iSkoot all courted Skype executives for a partnership. Only iSkoot got the nod, which led to their becoming the software behind Skype's profitable 3 Skypephone and profitable relationships with carriers.
Skype and 3 solved iSkoot's need for distribution, capital for PSTN-Skype gateway operations, and traffic monetization. Fring must to leap those barriers on its own. Maybe you can help: Nominate Fring for the Crunchies 2008 award.
Fring's popular software lets you access many Skype features on your mobile phone, including Apple iPhones, Google Androids, and Nokia Symbian smartphones.
A Fring spokesperson wrote about Fring's 400% growth this last year, now at 400 thousand new accounts monthly:
The monthly increase is a result of a number of things - the continued viral growth in fringsters now active in over 220 territories globally, our phenomenally successful iPhone launch which took us to the Number 1 free AppStore download in markets worldwide within twelve hours of launch, a number of new product releases and handsets supported, and our overall business development effort which includes items such as the Mobilkom A1 deal.
CORRECTION: As the original author of this story for CommsDay, I am corrected by Skype that the 4 billion minute figure is actually for Skype-to-Skype minutes with video, NOT mobile.
Turns out to be a confirmation of what we have heard in the past: 25% to 30% of all Skype-to-Skype calls invoke video calling.
So how can one generate Skype-to-Skype minutes from a mobile device? What % of Skype-to-Skype minutes are generated from a mobile device?
iSkoot: sets up a Skype session on their server using information delivered from the iSkoot client on a supported mobile device, such as BlackBerry or Nokia N-Series. When you make a Skype call, it's Skype-to-Skype from the iSkoot server to your called Skype contact.
Skypephone: uses iSkoot's algorithm with the one difference. 3 has set up their own "iSkoot" servers to support this service. As of October 1, 3 customers using iSkoot or a Skypephone can now make SkypeOut calls from any 3 Skype-enabled phone also.
Skype for Windows Mobile: here the limitation is the small, and decreasing, market share for Windows Mobile devices. It requires either a WiFi connection or 3G but the former is favored but both call quality and robustness reasons. But you can make both Skype-to-Skype and SkypeOut calls from this client. (And it's the only instance of a true Skype VoIP client on mobile device -- challenging both processor speeds and battery life.)
Skype for Mobile - currently at a beta stage with limited outbound calling; this service fundamentally uses the same architecture as iSkoot. (I suspect iSkoot has any appropriate intellectual property protected under this. After all, Skype and iSkoot are working together on Skypephone, etc. But it is interesting to experience the difference in user interfaces between iSkoot and Skype for Mobile) Again this does not put the full VoIP client on the device but rather back at a server. Probably not too many minutes here yet.
Update:Mobivox CEO Peter Diedrich emailed to remind me that their voice-enabled service also has the ability to launch Skype-to-Skype voice calls. From any landline or mobile handset worldwide the caller makes a "local" call to VoxGirl who, in turn, launches and connects to a Skype session on a Mobivox server. Effectively creating a landline- or mobile-to-Skype call, Mobivox requires no downloads or client software. VoxGirl will determine presence information to decide whether to proceed with a call; however, there is no IM/chat capability.
I have described my experience with Fring for iPhone when it launched almost two months ago. My problem with any iPhone application of this nature is that there is currently no background processing such that you can allow an IM session to run in background while executing other applications.
And how successful has 3's Skypephone service been? We initially heard some qualitative information at eComm 2008 last spring. But, information supplied by Skype's PR this morning provides us the basis for an order-of-magnitude guestimate:
".... since Skype launched the 3 Skypephone in November last year, there have been over over 100 million minutes of Skype-to-Skype calls by users of the 3 Skypephone and other mobile handsets with Skype and there are currently more than a million minutes of Skype-to-Skype calls each day on 3 mobiles in the UK."
So out of 16 billion Skype-to-Skype minutes each quarter (as reported in the last eBay quarterly analyst call), it would appear that, at the current > 1 million minutes/day on 3, 75 to 100 million minutes per quarter are via mobile handsets. Hmmm, that makes about 0.5% to 0.8% of all Skype-to-Skype minutes.
Why can 3 offer this service at such low prices? As explained by iSkoot CEO Mark Jacobstein at eComm 2008 last March, there are no termination charges for Skype-to-Skype calls, even when one Skype session is on an iSkoot server.
Q. Hey, it's Christopher Smith here for Relevantly Speaking. We're in Berkeley at the Haas School of Business. We're at the play conference and we're talking with Julian from Skype.
You've got a really enviable position there at Skype. you're a director of strategy, which means you have the ability to see the future, move the company into particular directions. Where are you going right now?
JD. The beauty of working for Skype is the breadth of opportunities you look at is very very wide. I'll give you a few examples. Skype could get into SMBs or enterprise. Skype could move more aggressively into mobile. Skype could get into the web. So there's a flurry of opportunities. And my job is to navigate the ones we should go after first knowing we're only a 500 [person] company.
So a few things that says...
One is: mobility is a big deal for us. There's tremendous appetite from our users to use Skype on the mobile. We don't want just to take the experience on the desktop into mobile. We want to invent something that's very unique to mobile and complements the desktop really nicely.
And also we think, even if it doesn't sound super sexy, just improving the basics of the service making it into the next level is a big deal for us. The best example is video calling in high def for everyone. We think that's really exciting, for example, and we're working very hard at this.
Q. You just released a desktop device to assist in that.
JD. We work with ASUS as a partner. They built the first Skype specific video phone, for example, which allows you, for I think it's a $200 device in the US, to get very simple video calling capabilities from your home without having a computer or anything else. That's one example of things we think are pretty cool.
About Google Video
Q. Last week Google comes out with Gmail Chat and Video in there. Do you find yourself in a defensible position there? Do you think Skype already has a very significant head start?
JD. Every time Google enters a space you have to watch out. They're big and they're very good and they innovate really fast. First thing I'll say we're not very surprised, that's something we've been expecting for a while. We're surprised it took so long.
We think it's a good product, we think the quality is good, it's not great, it's good, a nice implementation.
We think it also validates our idea that video is a big deal. And it's so early that everyone who can come with us and sort of help evangelize the fact that video calling is free for everyone and that it works is good.
Of course it's going to force us to get better and better, but I wouldn't say it's going to change our course. we're going to watch them. That's a company we have a lot of respect for in general.
Search
Q. Discoverability seems to be a common theme in a lot of the conferences we've been attending, the problem of finding both people or audiences for content. How are you guys approaching that problem?
JD. That's a very big question. It totally depends on what you're looking for, if you're looking for content or people.
We spend a lot of time helping you find people. it's a big deal for us to find someone you can communicate with. And linking people is a big deal for us because we're in the communication business.
Finding content is not our business. We'll definitely leverage third parties to do it. We'll let third parties get into Skype, to allow this to happen. We have for example the ability to attach a video mood message to your profile. So we worked with partners; you can attach a video to your message and if I'm connected to you I can click on that video and watch a video clip. That's the kind of thing we're going to do but it's mostly about driving and triggering conversation.
Future?
Q. So looking around the corner what should I anticipate from Skype?
JD. Great mobile applications, across platforms. I don't want to announce anything but look around all the key platforms are coming up. We'll be on there very soon with something pretty radical I think.
Expect the video and voice quality to improve significantly. So expect very very awesome video quality very very soon. And expect a few surprises. If you're a Mac user you'll have a few surprises pretty soon.
If we go back to our early September interview with Josh Silverman where we discussed "The Way Ahead - Platforms and Partners", Josh stated in response to our question about addressing ongoing partner communications issues:
What I don't want to do is over promise. Step one is, when you get somebody good in, lay out a plan and then when we're ready to announce some more forward looking things we'll do that.
I take the partner program really seriously and we're aware that we've not invested adequately behind it and want to do more. The first thing we are going to do is hire an experienced, capable leader of that organization who will pull together for me a plan for what resources do we need to invest in -- engineering, partner support, evangelism, technical documentation -- to make sure we build an organization that can support our partners robustly.
Interested in an extraordinary opportunity to win the hearts and minds of developers all over the world? Are you passionate about the promise of rich Internet communications? If so, Skype needs you to come help change the industry. We are seeking an individual who can help provide knowledge, expertise, and charisma for partners building applications on the Skype Platform.
A comment about the Skype platform:
The Skype Platform provides developers with an open communications development environment with unparalleled richness and reach. With the Skype platform developers can build and deploy differentiated and revenue-generating communications applications, devices, and services for businesses and consumers alike. Since its launch 5 years ago, Skype has grown to over 330 [370] Million registered users across the globe. Skype provides a breadth of rich and integrated communications experiences. Now we are looking for developers to take those capabilities and experiences to another level by integrating Skype into applications, devices, and services on the web. If you are interested in voice over IP, mobile devices, audio coding, video services, rich collaboration, gaming, next generation internet / interactive TV, Location based services and experience as a leader within a community of developers... this is the role for you.
And the challenge:
Your challenge is to drive the Skype Community program that moves the new platform forward, compliments our platform product investments and ultimately delights our partner community and users. Your success will be measured by your ability to work closely with the product teams to develop a comprehensive developer marketing plan, and work with our marketing, product, and business development teams to evangelize Skype's tools, development environment, and unique value proposition to the development community.
You will be part of the newly formed Skype Platform team whose mission is to lead the adoption of Skype's Platform with developers and ISVs. The team is resourced and chartered to secure the future of the Skype Platform with developer audiences that span corporate and commercial developers, device developers, next generation developers in startups, students and social developers that writes plug-ins, widgets and mash-up applications today.
It's a senior management position with responsibilities for leading a renewed Skype Developer program - articulating the vision, analyzing the market space and established best practices, executing on building sustainable developer partnerships, driving the interface between internal Skype resource teams such as developers, business development, marketing and the external developer partners through various outreach activities.
After describing the skills and experience sought, the posting concludes with:
You will be responsible for managing a team of professionals that will support your programs and plans to create a significant and long lasting impact on the community of Skype Software developers. We are looking for a thought leader that can also motivate and raise the enthusiasm of all Skype developers. This is a position with lots of visibility outside of Skype and experience managing media and driving public events is critical.
Location: London, UK or San Jose, CA. (With lots of air miles guaranteed.)
As for Dan York's question about "the team is resourced and chartered", recall that earlier in the same early September interview, Josh mentioned:
Right now we have created the job of GM of Platform; I hope to very soon name a GM of Platform. That person is going to have to really work on what does the architecture need to look like to support this, what are the API's going to be - reference UI's, technical documentation - as well as evangelizing to the broader community forming some of our partnerships, so we have some work to do.
So, I have to ask, in the context of what we heard during the interview: Has Skype appointed the GM of Platform but not announced it yet?
Dan also comments:
For those of us watching the emerging communication/telephony space, we've seen Skype make several different attempts over the years to create a successful developer program. Given their incredible user base and platform, it's been curious to see that they haven't yet found the right formula.
The Developer Program has more or less stalled since my Primer series post last fall discussing the developer partner achievements to that point in time. Yet there remain some basic resources such as API's, a base of about 50 partner applications, and what continues to be world leading technology that gives Skype a head start in architecting and building a complete platform from which developer partners can build successful businesses.
In the meantime we have seen the evolution of the Apple Developer Program for the iPhone where, even with my bias towards the BlackBerry, I have to admit that we have seen some very interesting, innovative and impressive third party applications and mashups. They link voice, presence, location-based services, social networking, search. The results include obtaining real time information for traffic and transit, contributing to a successful US presidential political campaign and finding the nearest Tim Hortons or Starbucks. The most interesting has to be this week's launch of voice activated Google Search, often invoking location based information for assistance.
The overriding challenge for Skype's Developer Community Manager will be to create a winning environment that can foster a similar level of creativity and innovation while generating business wins for both Skype and the developer partners. Or to requote Josh's statement: "to make sure we build an organization that can support our partners robustly."
From my viewpoint, it's the position that will ultimately make or break the restructured Skype. Partner innovation and successful business development are key to the sustainable and increasing revenues required to justify eBay's investment in Skype.
With both VoiceCon and Under The Radar events in the Bay Area last week, there were lots of announcements in the Voice 2.0 communications space; I wrote up some GigaOm and Web Worker Daily Posts to cover a few of them:
On Tuesday Voxbone announced the launch of their iNum Service. Basically it provides a means to have a universal worldwide "local" number that can be accessed through the recently accredited (by the ITU) +883 country code. Last Tuesday I hosted a SquawkBox conference call with Voxbone CEO Rod Ullens; a post on GigaOm with more details talks about Geography Is Dead - Thank VoIP. Two other excellent "Voxeo Talks" posts from Dan York on this topic (Voxeo is a Voxbone iNum Service Provider Partner):
The following day iotum announced the official launch of their Calliflower conference call service incorporating premium options for businesses that see its benefits for more interactive voice conferencing through the Calliflower call portal. Document sharing and a much wider range of access points, including iNum access were amongst the new features. And they announced an iPhone application for accessing Calliflower calls. More details can be found in my Web Worker Daily Post: Calliflower: A Complete Conference Calling Service.
Finally, in doing some checking out of a new service, I encountered an Automated Attendant that wanted me to enter a person's last name in order to locate that person in the host business's extension directory. But that presents a bit of a problem when you have a BlackBerry QWERTY keyboard and you want to generate the tones where 2--> "A, B or C", etc. But the RIM people think of everything; there is a relatively simple solution. Find out the answer over at Web Worker Daily in "Entering 'Last Name' From a BlackBerry".
3. Defrag. Some of the hardest questions are tackled at this thought leadership event. Among others, Daniela Barbosa of DataPortability.org is speaking. Colorado Convention Center.
5. Web 2.0 Summit. Still hankering for a press pass. Palace Hotel San Francisco.
5. WinHEC 2008. Windows hardware engineering. Los Angeles Convention Center.
5. Design Futures: Deconstructing Networks - Jonah Brucker-Cohen, of Trinity College Dublin, experiments in how we design and think about the social effect places and alert networks. U.C. Berkeley, California.
6. Edge of the Web 2008. Perth has a growing Web 2.0+ community. Crawley, Western Australia.
6. Tweets and Dreenks: November Social Drinkup. Mars Bar, San Francisco.
6. Mobile Forum Meeting: Opportunities in Broadband Wireless. San Jose, California.
10. Internet Identity Workshop. iiw2008b is a must-go event. This is where the digital ID architecture of the next 10 years is conceived, debated, and bought into. Computer History Museum, Mountain View, CA.
10. VoiceCon. Enterprise and unified communications. San Francisco.
11. e-Democracy '08. The first post-US election event to explore politics, public participation and digital technology. RIBA, Central London.
11. US Veteran's Day, Canada and UK Remembrance Day. National holiday.
12. Emerging Communications Dinner. Thought leaders who can't wait for eComm2009 March 03-05 will talk over supper. Ping me if you want an invite. (tips at skypejournal.com) San Francisco Airport Marriott.
12. Under the Radar: Mobility. 32 mobile startups less than one year old. Microsoft, Mountain View, California.
15. Convergence 08. Focus on long-term technologies, especially Nano-Bio-Info-Cogno. Co-sponsored by Foresight.org. Computer History Museum, Mountain View, California.
15. >play – Berkeley Digital Media. This year's theme is Disruption: Changes in the Digital Media Landscape. Organized by MBA students at Haas, U.C. Berkeley, California.
16. Adobe MAX 2008. Designers and developers imagine the next generation of browser-based talk. Moscone Center, San Francisco.
17. Future of Mobile. Jemima Kiss, James Brody, and folks from Google, Symbian, and Mozilla make this a must attend event. Kensington Town Hall, London.
17. Mashup Camp. Steve Repetti of DataPortability.org is speaking at this mostly un-conference. Mountain View, California.
18. Mobile Content Forum. The event for all those companies who made millions on ringtones and wallpaper. Register from your iPhone, baby. Hilton London Kensington.
19. Open Mobile Summit 08. Discount: Register by Oct 10 with priority code TRL and save $400. agenda. trailer:
Fantastic hallway with Skype's Jonathan Christensen, AT&T, Dean Bubley, Om Malik, Rebtel, BT Design's JP Rangaswami, Truphone's James Body, Orange, O2, The US FCC's Julius Knapp, David Isenberg, Amazon, T-Mobile, AOL, Nokia, Google, Symbian, Intel, TAT, LG, RIM, OpenMoko, Funambol, Qualcomm. San Francisco.
18. Robo Development 2008. Robotics small, large, smart, and social. Santa Clara, California.
19. SOA World and Cloud Computing. The 14th Service Oriented Architecture conference. Now the standard for platforming architectures. I want to hear the session on building real-time SOA systems. The program's big buzzwords: cloud and virtual. The Fairmont Hotel, San Jose, California.
26. The Media Festival. The session I want: "Case study: Lessons from the adult entertainment industry; learn the secrets of success in mobile entertainment." Always two to five years' ahead in technology and business practices due to intense competition. Manchester.
27. US Thanksgiving. A nation shuts down for a long weekend of American football, turkey, beer. And gratitude.
Hudson asked me about using minutes instead of dollars and the trend of the Freemium Rate I described Monday.
Comparing apples to apples, minutes-talked is the only data I have on both sides of the free/fee equation.
Money as a measure is useful. It leads us to the lifetime value of a customer. How can we measure free in dollars?
We might value the free minutes at some averaged rate and compare that to Skype's overall revenue.
Skype earns money from licensing its brand, the rental of SkypeIn phone numbers, from its online store, ads in Skype’s yellow page directory services. Sadly, I don’t have access to revenue data broken out by source.
We might include costs with dollars, seeking profitability or net value of customers. Costs for fee-based services are higher (transaction costs, higher security, admin, sales costs, customer service, technical support, business development) than for free.
Meanwhile, we have customer behavior in the form of minutes. And the simple freemium rate comparing free to fee. It will suffice.
Global IP Solutions today announced a white paper on Desktop Video Conferencing, providing a background for their video infrastructure technology that has the potential to make video calling and video conferencing available to a much broader user base beyond Skype's (even though it is quite large) and SightSpeed.
Many of you will recall that Skype's original voice engine came from Global IP Solutions (formerly Global IP Sound) and contributed to Skype's initial adoption through both its ease of use and voice quality. In April 2006, Skype acquired Camino Networks whose voice engine provided improved features such as echo cancellation. Camino's President and CEO was Jonathan Christensen, Skype's current General Manager for Audio and Video.
Global IP Solutions went on to supply their voice engine to other players, such as Oracle and Yahoo but, as a company, they have been struggling; their most recent quarterly report demonstrated the extent of the revenue drop-off after loss of the Skype royalties.
This past April, GIPS announced the appointment of a new CEO, Emerick Woods (see full disclosure below). Since joining GIPS Emerick has led a reorganization of the company that included dropping their professional services offerings due to not only lackluster revenue but also the channel conflicts that operation created for their core audio and video infrastructure technology business. They have also closed a Tokyo office and settled outstanding customer lawsuits, including one with Skype where GIPS' previous claims were denied in an arbitration resolution. As indicated in this interview with iLocus, they are moving to extend their customer base for their Voice Engine product line. As an initial move in August there was the announcement of Voice Engine for iPhone accompanied by a white paper.
In my interview with Emerick at that time, he pointed out that, while GIPS offers, through its various Voice Engine products, a total solution linking the Internet inbound/outbound connection to the user's microphone/speakers, customers can also customize the voice engine, particularly when it comes to codecs. Customers can use either the GIPS codecs available with the voice engine or any other standard codec. Another feature he emphasized was their independence from operating system restraints and their support for various mobile platforms.
One additional focus has been on working with their current customer base to build stronger customer relationships that can extend their various Global IP Solutions implementations. Going forward, GIPS will be investing in innovation with video as a key focus.
Today GIPS released a Desktop Video Conferencing (DVC) white paper, authored by analyst Jon Arnold, outlining "the value proposition behind desktop video conferencing, especially in conjunction with other solutions, such as telepresence. Supporting this is an analysis of the trends that create the momentum we believe will make desktop video conferencing as ubiquitous as PCs themselves, and even mobile phones in the years to come."
Jon talks about the spectrum of video conferencing solutions from telepresence systems employing large "real life" HD video displays, such as offered by Cisco and Polycom, to boardroom systems that provide the basics of teleconferencing via standard display monitors, to desktop conferencing where the user does not have to leave his/her desk to participate in a video conversation.
In short, compared to other video conferencing solutions, the value proposition for DVC is based on three variables: quality, cost and flexibility. Today’s DVC solutions can deliver a high-quality experience, at an affordable price point, and across a wide variety of environments. Aside from complementing the other types of video conferencing solutions, DVC can be deployed in a host of scenarios that are simply not practical any other way.
Jon goes on to provide tables comparing the three scenarios and then goes into details on potential market size for DVC as well as enabling trends that will help provide an appropriate infrastructure for DVC. On a SquawkBox conference call this morning we discussed one aspect: support for HD video. Its minimum 720p resolution will require higher bandwidth upload speeds (> 1.5 Mbps) that I have been told will be coming to Rogers Internet next year with an implementation of the DOCSIS 3 infrastructure and probably to other cable Internet services; recall that the widespread availability of broadband Internet was one factor in the rapid adoption of Skype back at its launch in 2003.
He then goes on to discuss the complexities of the providing and adopting the underlying technologies starting with video quality. Synchronization of audio and video, a consistent user experience, the variability of DVC end point configurations and support for a wide range of camera devices are other factors.
And, now for the commercial: GIPS is offering four products, Voice Engine and Video Engine for the PC client side and Voice Conference Engine and Video Conference Engine for the server side, that will allow ready embedding of desktop video conferencing into their customers' services. Basically GIPS is providing platforms that allow developers, enterprises, service providers and end users to have a high quality DVC experience. Jon concludes:
With GIPS, they have a complete engine that handles all the complexities of IP communications, and with that, a clear path for allowing DVC to reach its full potential, not just at the desktop, but in the mobile world as well.
GIPS has put up two demonstration videos for comparison: one "Traditional Video Conference" and the other "Video Conference Using Global IP Solutions".
The only current customers using these services are Oracle and Baidu, the Chinese portal; however, discussions are being carried out with several prospective customers, probably including many in their current customer Most interesting is their potential for mobile video; the only North American carrier supporting video to date has been Rogers; however, its most obvious problem is finding other users who can take video calls. Introduction of the Nokia N95 8GB was supposed to expand the video calling-enabled user community; however, iPhone and BlackBerry Bold have stolen the 3G phone market.
Skype's High Quality Video, SightSpeed's acquisition yesterday by Logitech, Qik on Blackberry and Nokia N-Series combined with news of GIPS video engine offerings are all precursors to a much broader adoption of user-friendly video in both business and personal conversations in the future. (Yes, we all know users have been looking for Skype video conferencing; when?)
Skype Journal: On2 Powers Skype High Quality Video
Full disclosure: GIPS CEO Emerick Woods was the Vice-President, Internet of Quarterdeck Corporation in the mid-1990's with whom I worked on several business development projects involving partnerships with ISP's of the time. Over the past 12 years, Emerick, in his capacity as CEO of several startups, which have gone on to be sold, has hired the author at various times for his business development services. The author, however, has no business relationship with Global IP Soltuions. One more clarification: Emerick has the same initials as a well known Tiger and loves golf just as much.
Tags: Global IP Solutions, GIPS, Emerick Woods, Jon Arnold, Skype High Quality Video, Polycom, Cisco, Nokia, BlackBerry, Qik.com, Logitech, video conferencing, video calling, video, Jonathan Christensen, Desktop Video Conferencing, Voice Engine, Video Engine
It's a classic case of the importance of working with customers who have large customer or user bases such that this asset alone may trump all the technology arguments out there.RIM designed the Storm to meet Verizon's and Vodafone's requirements. It's the embedded user base that will be a most significant factor in determining the extent of market penetration.
Full disclosure: I have both an iPhone and a BlackBerry Bold. Each has its niche of applications and target markets. iPhone finds me the closest Tim Horton's or Starbucks. Bold is still my multi-processing smartphone of choice for business applications; its precision trackball pointing device allowed me to transcribe the Josh Silverman interview - an application I could not do with the iPhone. And Bold provides Skype Chat messages in real time in background when using iSkoot.
The new G-1 phone based on Google's Android platform is slowing getting out to market this week through T-Mobile stores in U.S. locations where T-Mobile supports the 3G wireless protocol. At launch there appear to be about 50 third party applications available for download to the G-1 via Android Market.
One of those applications is iSkoot for Skype. From iSkoot's description at Android Market:
iSkoot for Skype puts the features of Skype in your Android handset. Acess your Skype contacts, make & receive Skype calls, chat, and place SkypeOut calls to phone numbers all over the world. iSkoot delivers unsurpassed mobile Skype call quality and does not require a WiFi connection.
iSkoot for Skype makes it easy and affordable for people to keep in touch with friends, family and contacts with an always-on-the-go lifestyle. iSkoot for Skype leverages the voice-optimized circuit-switched wireless networks of mobile carriers, allowing for full operation even without access to WiFi or 3G networks and ensuring the best possible call quality. Normal carrier voice and data charges always apply.
Make SkypeOut calls? Seems like T-Mobile is the first North America carrier to tolerate SkypeOut calling from a mobile handset over a 3G network. (3 recently added SkypeOut calling to the various Skype/iSkoot-enabled services they support, including Skypephone; Truphone for iPhone only works over a WiFi connection.) T-Mobile will make their revenue through the "local" minutes required to place a Skype call via iSkoot.
VoIP over 3G? Not really, recall that the iSkoot model is to use the data channel for chat messaging and call setup information. The voice call itself is handled over the much more robust and voice-friendly GSM voice channel.
And why iSkoot on the Android platform before on the iPhone? Seems that the Android platform fully supports the background multi-tasking requirement of any Skype-enabled product where you want to have Skype chat sessions running in background - while using any other Android application - and only want to bring them forward when a new message appears. That's my experience when using iSkoot on my Blackberry Bold.
It's the TR-10 for Skype but with reprinted buttons and software for your Mac. IPEVO's software lets you control iChat from the trio and record your iChat calls. $79.90 MSRP.
Gee. Apple? For a company created to build products for Skype in North America?
Apple, on the other hand, has stores. These are shots of the merchandise on Cupertino and New York City shelves.
Skype had the potential for a large and healthy hardware ecosystem. Sadly, hardware partners from Skype's early days have burned through so much cash, talent and goodwill, that most have walked away from Skype.
The few remaining, like IPEVO, are eager to partner with companies that help them demonstrate design leadership or even simple distribution support. They may love Skype, but relationships are two-way streets.
Over the past five weeks I have had the opportunity to work with the Blackberry Bold on the Rogers network, including a week in California where I used it on AT&T's network. While it has provided significant performance improvements over my previous 8820 and has several applications that just are not available for the iPhone, I still had the feeling I was running with late beta stage or release candidate firmware. The availability of a new firmware release over the past weekend has changed that feeling. But its U.S. release on AT&T has also been dogged by 3G network robustness issues.
Let me put some of these issues in perspective, incorporating my own experience with the Bold on both networks.
There are two major technical issues related to the Bold:
Network robustness issues at AT&T
Firmware issues that have possibly resulted in suspension of deliveries at Orange (and reports of inventory shortages at other carriers)
First, to cover the AT&T network robustness issues:
as reported in RIM's second-quarter report, 60 carriers in 29 countries have launched the Bold, including Canada where I've had a Bold running on Rogers for the past five weeks.
several recent news reports have reported on network robustness issues as a contributor to the delayed launch on AT&T: Globe and Mail, TMCNet, CrunchGear
a personal indicator: on a recent trip to California both my Blackberry Bold and iPhone 3G found an "EDGE" signal on AT&T more often than it found a 3G signal (in spite of setting the Bold to only operate on 3G). On the Rogers network I find the "3G" signal (in supported urban areas, such as Toronto and Montreal) more than 95 percent of the time.
I have to conclude, combining these issues, that the AT&T network robustness issues are real and serve as a threat to RIM's ability to penetrate the U.S. market via the Bold. On the other hand the pending launch of Blackberry Storm at Verizon may become RIM's primary route to to the U.S. market for their 3G smartphones, given Verizon's reputation for, and experience with, 3G networks along with their extensive customer base. (Why else would several of my U.S.-based blogging colleagues attending the recent IT Expo all be running their laptops on Verizon for Internet connectivity with no complaints?)
Five weeks' experience with the Bold tells me about its firmware:
It delivers a significant performance improvement relative to the Blackberry 8820 I have been using for the past year. An half-VGA display with over 200 dpi resolution, 3G network speed and 624 Mhz processor speed all contribute.
At no time has my experience to date inhibited my ability to carry on my normal mobile-supported business activities. I have had an opportunity to successfully take advantage of new applications such as editing Word documents.
The display grows on you; when you find crystal clear small fonts or view Google Maps, you get this "how did they do this?" feeling. As indicated in other reviews, it's stunning. And the supported resolution is a major contributor to my next point.
The Bold is definitely a game changer. After my week of traveling to California with the Bold, I realized that I was experiencing a significant change in my mobile device work patterns. I was simply going to the Bold to keep current not only on email (using a strategic combination of both Blackberry Mail and GMail) but also on my Twitter feed, Facebook and Google Reader. I was able to not only read but also edit Word documents. I had lost the anxiety-inflamed urge to fire up my laptop PC to remain "always connected"; One non-technical acquaintance who has had a Bold since the Rogers launch in late August commented to me last weekend "I'm beginning to think my Bold is more powerful than my notebook".
At Mobilize 08 I met Google Maps senior product manager Steve Lee who pointed me to a new version of Google Maps for Blackberry which added Street View to the feature set available on Blackberry. While Google Maps itself is an excellent demonstration of both the Bold's display quality and speed, turning on Street View and either moving down a street or rotating around a selected address brings into play both network and processor speeds to dynamically generate high quality images. (While this is a feature that will be included on Android, it is still not available on the iPhone.)
Using Blackberry's MediaSync, I can keep my music files updated by syncing with iTunes. But I also found having the trackball mouse a significant benefit when transcribing our interview with Josh Silverman via the media player; basically I was using the Bold as a Dictaphone.
Skype chats running in iSkoot can run in background and provide notification when new chat messages appear. Also when my home office broadband was down recently for a neighborhood cable upgrade, I was able to use iSkoot to call into the daily SquawkBox conference call.
Performance on WiFi has been excellent; walk into a registered WiFi zone and the Bold picks it up immediately. The actual registration process itself for a WiFi zone could be smoother but otherwise it works as expected.
However, the Bold has been by no means perfect. Web pages would sometimes come up slowly; on some sites I would randomly get either the actual PC version of a page or the mobile version of the site. Sites were often stripped down to their basic content, absent of banners and sidebars. YouTube videos would stall with a "buffering" indicator appearing in the display; I was never able to view the complete video. I started to feel this was late beta stage firmware, not quite ready for "Main Street". And then Friday reports appeared that Orange was possibly suspending Blackberry shipments due to software quality issues.
Friday evening I learned that RIM had released new firmware for Blackberry Bold on Rogers. It was described as addressing browser issues, delivering more stability and improving memory management, amongst other issues. I installed it quite seamlessly Saturday morning with the following immediate observations:
The browser is much faster at bringing up standard web pages and renders original web pages correctly. Pages with few "feature enhancements" involving "scripts" load as rapidly as on the iPhone; pages with lots of "scripts" do take longer but are correctly and much more rapidly rendered.
YouTube videos can now be played to the end. On some videos I encounter a momentary "buffering" delay but they always went to completion. The actual player itself could provide better video quality to achieve the superb quality I have seen on the Bold's display when mpeg movie files are run but a user can readily follow the YouTube video action.
After two days' use, using the phone itself only minimally but with lots of web activity over WiFi, my battery is only down to the 40% level whereas with the earlier version I found I had to always do a daily overnight recharge.
Other issues need a few days' use to determine if they have been addressed. But overall this upgraded Bold firmware appears to spell good news for not only Blackberry Bold but also the Blackberry Storm whose major differences involve radio bands supported, slightly larger display resolution and the type of keyboard but otherwise are based on the same underlying operating system, application and browser firmware.
The question that remains here is whether AT&T can fix their network problems in the near future or will the pending launch of Blackberry Storm become the real Blackberry 3G device launch product? For once I am quite happy to be a Rogers customer where they have spent over a year working with 3G technology prior to the Bold's launch and the network performance is "just there".
Bottom line: the Bold allows new user work patterns for mobile smartphones. It significantly reduces or removes the reliance on laptops to keep current with many communications activities, whether Skype Chat, Twitter Feeds or even minor document modification. Its 480 x 320 display makes it easy to read blog posts without ribbon bars. Background processing allows true multi-tasking. If you're in a country where it is available it is worth checking out (especially once any residual firmware issues are resolved; if you're in the U.S., it's worth having the patience to await its release on AT&T or even the Storm's release on Verizon.
Disclosure: the author has held a minuscule number of RIM shares since 1998.
Deadspin's "Kendra Wilkinson Will Skype Your Brains Out" delights in a Playboy Playmate's experience that Skype video is better than phone sex. So that's what all the Skype High Quality Video fuss is about!
Skype asked the FCC to support unfettered customer freedom following statements at CTIA's conference last month. CTIA and Sprint retorted with balderdash and Skype's Christopher Libertelli sets them straight in this short, direct letter. Emphasis mine.
October 8, 2008
Electronic Filing
Chairman Kevin J. Martin Federal Communications Commission 445 12th Street, SW 12th Street Lobby, TW-A325 Washington, D.C. 20554
Re: Ex Parte Presentation; RM-11361
Dear Chairman Martin:
Skype Communications S.A.R.L. (“Skype”) responds briefly to CTIA’s letter of September 24th and Sprint Nextel’s letter of September 26th, both of which take issue with Skype’s earlier letter to you regarding the lack of openness of wireless networks. CTIA and Sprint go to great lengths to rebut Skype’s characterization of remarks made at a CTIA conference earlier this month, which Skype viewed as indicative of a hesitant, closed network mentality among wireless operators.
Rather than prolong an empty debate about whose characterization of remarks at the conference is correct, let me point out that Skype’s application is forbidden, blocked and otherwise interfered with by the largest CTIA members.[1] When CTIA members claim that “the entire Internet is open,” the intended implication is that the entire Internet is open, including to multi-modal Internet communications applications like Skype. The truth of the matter, however, is that, despite their representations to the contrary, applications are blocked even on the most recently-announced advanced handsets.[2] The proof of Skype’s argument is in the conduct of CTIA members, no matter what speeches are made at conferences. If Skype is blocked, the network is not open.
I also would like to take this opportunity to remind you that CTIA is currently suing the Commission to overturn the very openness rule they now claim to embrace. If the wireless industry is serious about openness, CTIA would immediately withdraw that litigation.
CTIA attempts to sidestep the fact that its members’ networks are not open by arguing that Skype itself is closed and, apparently, therefore cannot advocate consumer empowerment principles and network openness. To make this point, they cite a blog post by Mr. Michael Robertson, CEO of Gizmo Project, a VOIP application. Fundamentally, Mr. Robertson is wrong. Mr. Robertson confuses open networks with open platforms. Skype is an open platform. Anyone, anywhere on the planet can download Skype for free, and he or she will be able to use Skype. Skype’s software is open to any application developer through our public Application Programming Interface (‘API’) program. Over 10,000 developers have taken advantage of this API and are part of Skype’s developer program. In fact there are many applications that use Skype’s APIs to send calls to/from Skype users and SIP endpoints, including VoSky, Fring, etc. Skype also recently collaborated with Digium/Asterisk, which will now bring Skype into “soft PBXs” for millions of users and allow many forms of applications and services to connect to Skype seamlessly.
Mr. Robertson is also wrong on the law. He rehashes the incumbent wireless operators’ various arguments against network neutrality and confuses to whom the Internet Policy Statement applies. Openness rules are properly targeted at network operators because of the limited intermodal choices available to US consumers in a wireless market dominated by the top three operators. Conversely, there is nearly limitless choice in Internet applications, with fierce competition and few or no barriers to entry. Quite properly, therefore, the Internet Policy Statement applies to networks and not to applications. Its aim is to assure an open Internet so that consumers can choose from the limitless number of applications available to Internet users, absent discrimination by network operators. To apply it to Internet applications would flipt the Internet Policy statement on its head. What the network operators are doing is very different. They restrict consumer choice by blocking Skype and other applications to which consumers would like to have access. To apply the Internet Policy Statement to Internet applications would flip the Policy Statement on its head.
We greatly appreciate CTIA’s invitation to attend the April show in Las Vegas. If CTIA members would like to prove their openness once and for all, Skype’s top executives will be available to attend the conference. When a Skype user can legally call the Chairman of the FCC on the mobile broadband networks of each of the top three wireless networks, we will know that their conduct is consistent with the consumer empowerment principles of the Internet Policy Statement.
We look forward to working with the Commission and CTIA members to ensure that the whole Internet – including multimodal applications such as Skype – is available to consumers.
Respectfully submitted,
Christopher Libertelli Senior Director, Government and Regulatory Affairs SKYPE COMMUNICATIONS S.A.R.L. 6e etage, 22/24 boulevard Royal, Luxembourg, L-2449 LUXEMBOURG
1. Most network operators continue to restrict VoIP and or P2P applications on their network in apparent violation of the protocol-agnostic network management techniques employed by other operators, including Comcast.
As usual after a Northern Hemisphere Summer, the growth of Skype users is again visible. Not that there is no growth in summer but
less people are working,
more people switch their computers off while they are in the garden, or
they are traveling and have less access to Internet.
Therefore, fewer users are online at the same time.
Those summers are very visible on the "million milestones" graph that I published last week. In all the past years, excluding the first year, the dots representing the "million milestones" are quite close to each other (see the brown left braces), except when there is a July-August period in the middle (see the red "summer" arrows).
So, what for 2008-2009? I would guess that Skype will as usual add two more "million dots' to its graph before July 2009 (see the Sky(pe) Blue extrapolated dots), going well over the 15 million people online. And I predict also that Skype will reach 16 million concurrent users somewhere around September 2009. But it is only a guess :-)
Perhaps I was a bit too fast and too rude to answer (I apologize for this), because indeed the last 12 months were much better, than the previous 12 months. But anyway, let me analyze the table above, to explain why I still feel I am right. The table shows the top or record concurrent users online at several dates in the past.
The third column is the mean daily (rounded) number of additional concurrent users online at “peak time” for a certain time span. For instance:
The last two weeks (before September 22), the mean increase was 35000 additional concurrent users online.
The last year it was 9800 additional concurrent users online.
And so on.
How do we predict the future? Based on the last two weeks (+35000)? Or on the last 6 months (only +5300!), or on the last year? We can’t predict the future of course, we only can make guesses.
Choosing periods smaller than a year is often wrong for predicting long term growth. Changes in speed in smaller periods can however teach us something about temporary effects (the success of the launch of new Skype features, or the seasonal “Northern Hemisphere summer” effect).
For the long term past growth, we the see that the 2007-2008 season (+9800 users/per day) was very much better than the previous season (+6500). Does this mean that the growth is much faster? Is Hudson right? Could be, but in my opinion, the season 2006-2007 (+6500) was a very bad one compared with the two previous ones (+8300 and +10000), and last year (+9800) was just catching up again.
Only the future will tell, and some signs are very promising: Asterisk, Client version 4.0, Skype for iPhone, perhaps even multiparty videoconferencing, …
Fring is clearly tapping pent-up demand for access to Skype on mobiles. The enthusiasm for rejoining your Skype network is infectious.
The biggest limits for me: no multichat support (a big part of my onlife), no background processing (like I only live in Skype?). Jim Courtney's hands-on test may dampen your enthusiasm for fring on the iPhone. Have you had a good experience with fring?
Earlier today Fring, known for aggregating various IM and VoIP services onto a mobile phone, announced Fring for iPhone had become available on the Apple App Store. So I gave it a tryout this evening, exchanging chat messages and then a couple of voice calls to Skype destinations.
My quick comment:
the other party's voice was both a bit fuzzy and somewhat weak in volume.
both other parties complained of some echo; I did not hear echo at my end.
The call appeared to be going out over the iPhone's WiFi connection.
Calls went out over the WiFi connection.
The benchmark in call quality would be my experiences earlier this week where twice , when my home office cable was disconnected due to "cable plant" improvements in my neighborhood, I used iSkoot on the Blackberry Bold to call into SquawkBox via the CalliFlower voice conferencing service over the Rogers 3G network.
Let 's just say in the iSkoot calls, the technology was transparent to the discussion and I could lay the phone on my desk while still actively participating. Whereas my Fring calls would not have been of sufficient quality to carry on natural dialogue participation in a conference call. While Fring has shown to be a leader in demonstrating the potential to make such a call, it has some work to do to achieve business grade call quality.
My other comment, now having used Skype IM chat on both devices. It's much easier to have a text conversation via the Blackberry with a QWERTY real keyboard. Thick thumbs on a "touch" keyboard many errors make; as I said in my brief Fring-enabled IM Skype chat session with Dan York - I was sending these IM messages "under duress" (and with about a 25% typing error rate).
Note that during registration I encountered a bug whereby Fring would not recognize my email address, which includes a "dot" between first and last name. This is a known bug which we hope they will fix quickly, especially due to the privacy issue raised in the linked Fring forum discussion.
More to follow once I will have had a few days' experience in its use.
Other posts: Mac Rumors
So another million mark was reached on 15 September 2008: 13 million concurrent Skype users online.
After a very strong start in 2008, where two million-marks were reached in a very short time span, we had to wait 210 days for the next million. [Skype reached 12 million online on 20 February 2008.] This was the third longest period we had to wait for a million mark. This also means there is still a good and steady growth of Skype users, and it also means most of them are satisfied with the services offered.
But the growth isn't exponential anymore. The graph seems to show a small downward bending tendency.
I hope some innovations will cheer us up in the near future: a genuine Skype client for the iPhone for instance!
And perhaps another side comment: until right now, almost nobody blogged about these 13 million. It therefore seems to be a no-event!
Three political issues directly affect Skype users.
Network neutrality requires your ISP not treat your Skype bits differently from other bits they carry. ISPs in some countries blocked Skype for political and competitive reasons. ISPs in the United States slowed or blocked Skype to favor their own VoIP solutions.
McCain voted against net neutrality
Obama voted for net neutrality.
Rural access to the Internet is limited compared to American urban access. It costs more to run cables and antennae those last miles and miles and miles. More than one third of the US population lives outside major cities and suburbs.
Obama favors using the Universal Service Fund, moneys already collected for rural phone access, to improve rural Internet access.
McCain favors tax incentives for those who expand rural Internet access.
Wireless Carterfone allows you to connect unlocked phones to the mobile phone network the same way you can plug any phone of your choice into a landline phone socket, the original Carterfone ruling. It's a consumer freedom (to move your sim chip into the Skype, Google or Apple phone of your choice) and an opportunity for mobile device makers to innovate.
Obama voted for this.
McCain voted against.
We'll update this post when after the debate goes online.
Christopher Libertelli, Skype's Senior Director, Government and Regulatory Affairs – North America will be the featured guest on SquawkBox tomorrow (Thursday, Sept. 18 at 11:00 a.m. EDT - 'GMT-5') to discuss his recent letter to FCC Chair Kevin Martin about U.S. wireless carriers misperception of what "open networks" and "unfettered access" really means.
For the past two days at IT Expo I have been listening to speakers talk about the need to make wireless services "open" such that both application innovation can occur and consumers have unfettered freedom of choice with respect to the wireless services, portals and applications they individually prefer to use. The Apple App store is the first to break the carriers' foothold but expect others such as RIM and Nokia to follow suit in the next few months in driving towards user freedom. (In fact there are over 4400 applications for various Blackberry models at Handango.com). In a post earlier today Phil has also commented on the Chris' letter.
This is the first in a series of posts resulting from in interview last Friday with Josh Silverman, Skype's recently appointed President. In this post we provide an overview of the range of topics discussed and some background to the interview.
On Friday Phil and I participated in a one hour wide ranging interview with Skype's new President, Josh Silverman. Having listened to both Skype's team and the market over the past few months, Josh is starting to take the high level measures required to grow Skype from a technology "marvel" into a full-fledged conversation infrastructure business that is "just there" when you want to converse ... anywhere, anytime. Having personally participated in a corporate restructuring over a decade ago, suffice it to say that, while technology has been rapidly changing in the interim, the basic requirements for growing a business from a "wonder" into a sustainable, world class enterprise have not changed. After all, you're dealing with human interactions and we're all still emotional beings who need motivation internally (to build a functional employee team) and a "wow" level of excitement externally (to build an appreciative user base). Some background facts that have led to the issues that Skype must address and the action plan Josh has determined to be necessary:
Skype, in its first five years, has grown to its over $500MM annual run rate faster than either eBay or PayPal
Skype has about 500 employees worldwide with over 150 joining in the past year
Skype delivers about 6% by minutes of the world's international calling traffic
product innovation: making Skype easier to use and more reliable; the video opportunity
paid services and their marketing:
Skype as a platform: embedding Skype as the conversation infrastructure for devices and services.
In many ways our discussion expanded on those themes. Because of the range of topics we covered and given short posts make for easier and more readily absorbed reading than one long post, we'll cover the interview content in several posts over the coming week. But our topics will include:
Restructuring and reorganizing with new focuses while delegating responsibility
Skype's platform strategy and the infrastructure required to execute
Skype's approach to the business market
Geographical markets
Generating broader awareness through marketing
Tech support
Since Om had already asked the questions about Skype on iPhone and the eBay relationship, we left those out of our interview in the interest of using our time with Josh to learn more about Skype's internal evolution and the direction in which Josh sees driving Skype as a publisher of conversation infrastructure software and services. Next: Righting the Ship
What follows is a very rough and partial transcript of the first half of the interview, starting after generic introductions. Spelling, typos, omissions, and other errors are all mine. Corrections and additions welcome.
Om: eBay Synergy?
Josh: "Our mission is enabling the world's conversations. We aspire to be is the world's leading communications software company."
Josh: "I think that the communications industry is going through one of the great sea changes of our time. And we'll look back ten years from now at this moment in time and say this is the time when communications transitioned from being hardware to being software.
What i mean by that If you cast your mind back ten years ago, you'll remember that dedicated appliance you had called the telephone. and it was purpose built for voice and it was tied to a network that was purpose built for voice.
if you think about the world we live in today we use these multipurpose computing devices, i don't know about you, maybe 5% of my time on this is spent with voice communications. i do all kinds of other communications with it. if you look at the iPhone, it's not even a communications device. you're checking stock prices or the Internet, watching movies and listening to music. one of the applications you use on that device is around communication.
so communications moved from hardware to software.
it's now part of every device and every device is connected to a multipurpose network called the Internet.
so what that means for consumers is massive amounts of innovation, making communication richer and fuller.
again, going back to when communication was embedded in the hardware, it was only voice. now, if you think about the spectrum of communications, it goes all the way from very short twitter-like communications, in our case we call them mood messages, to chat, to voice, to video, to file transfer and online collaboration; a whole set of different modes you want to talk in, all tied together by some common services. for example one common address book, a common set of presence. and what consumers want and need is that core set of services to follow them from device to device everywhere they are.
we think Skype is uniquely well positioned to capitalize on that. in fact we think that is the future.
just like the train industry did not invent the airplane, the telephony industry is not going to invent the communications business of the future.
Om: I wrote about ten of the telephone companies getting together and building their own client. What do you make of that?
Josh: We welcome competition from all sources.
Om: If you were a betting man, when would you bet will they release a product like that?
Josh: the phone companies have not been known to be world class at building software. when ten of them get together the odds go down a lot.
the great thing about communications being in software is this is going to be a massively competitive industry. and when it's massively competitive the consumer wins.
what we need for that to happen is we need open networks.
and the world that North America lives is in today, where the carriers control the device you can use and the software you can load on the device, consumers are losing big time.
Om: I wouldn't go that far. That's Skype's argument. I don't buy that. Although I agree we're are living in a country where competition is scarce, and where it's almost like an emerging economy as far as broadband and IP networks are concerned.
Being married to eBay seems like a big mismatch.
...
Josh: One of the interesting things about the communications space is that it is very balkanized. cable providers against the fixed line against the wireless. and any camp you join makes as many foes as it does friends. one of the really unique things about eBay is within eBay umbrella I'm a totally neutral camp, i can work with everybody.
Om: why not just go public? spin it out of eBay? you are profitable, you've got revenues, you have customers, your are growing business like crazy. why not a standalone company?
Om: What should we as consumers be excited about?
So there's three things we're focused on right now at the highest level. Product innovation, paid services, and platform.
On the product innovation side I'd highlight a couple of things.
Skype was not the first company to do voice over the Internet, it was just the first one to make it really easy. while Skype is very easy to use, it's not easy enough. and so a lot of the innovation you should expect from us is making it even easier and even more reliable.
Another big area of focus in product innovation is going to be around video.
Video is going to be the dominant form of communication. now i don't mean that that all calls will be video calls. i think voice and chat will be table stakes and people will make the decision around which application to use based on who delivers the best, most reliable, highest value video experience. so we think video is a great source of differentiation for Skype.
On the paid services side, we have some great paid services. They're just not particularly well marketed. A lot of our users don't know we have them, we haven't named them well, we haven't described the what the value proposition is well. When people find out about them, they're delighted. We just haven't done a good job. So I think there's a lot we can do just to market our current products and services better and bring some new and exciting ones to market.
The last thing I talked about is platform. Skype has historically been a relatively closed community. now, we have created an api that has about 15000 partners working with Skype to build their capabilities into Skype. there's a massive ecosystem of people who want to build Skype into their products and services, from hardware providers who want to build Skype into flat panel televisions or cordless phones to software providers and web sites who want to build Skype in. and we should be working with all of those, we can't win if we're working with all of them one off, so we need to have a really robust platform. obviously, the within platform the area of most importance needs to be mobile.
This is a great start. Let's explore this further.
Skype is one of five finalists, along with Apple iChat, Grand Central, Vonage and Gizmo Project in BusinessWeek's "Best of The Web" poll where results will be published in a special report in the September 29 issue. The poll itself seems to be at cross purposes when they say "BusinessWeek wants to know the sites you consider most valuable when it comes to getting informed, making money, having fun, and building your own online tools." I think the five candidates listed above should be described as applications as opposed to "sites". Google Chrome may be encouraging the development of browser-based applications but that does not mean stand alone applications are necessarily doomed.
When you go to the voting page, select the "Calling" category under "Online Tools" (scroll down, way down) and make your choice in the resulting pop-up. Note that there is also an option for "Other" but you'll need to provide details. Vote early (but you can't vote often); polling ends September 12.
Over the past few months I have been a frequent participant on Alec Saunders' daily SquawkBox conference call where several of those involved in following today's communications and web developments will discuss topics of the day. Subjects for yesterday's call were the impact of the Internet on this years U.S. President campaign and Skype's fifth anniversary today. Participants included Dan York of Voxeo, James Body of Truphone, William Volk of MyNumo (one of the more successful iPhone Apps developers) and Jonathan Jensen amongst others. The Saunderslog post is here.
The Skype discussion commences about half-way through the call. The one universal agreement was that Skype has succeeded because of the user experience. You can build all the communications technology you want but unless people can get all the way through the setup and readily make a call, people will not use it routinely. And the discussion highlights the importance of getting the Skype 4.0 user interface right but starting with some experimentation that challenges all of us to think through how to set up and manage a multi-modal conversation experience.. Some comments from the SquawkBox discussion:
James Body: participating in a discussion at a smoke-filled bar in London with Nicklas just after Skype launched: "this proprietary thing will never work because it does not use SIP". James then goes on to point out that if Skype had not had the success it has achieved, Truphone may never have been funded to the level they have obtained.
Alec Saunders: basically it was the first VoIP-based service that "just worked".
I then discussed my memories of watching the Quarterdeck team develop WebTalk back in 1995 - and how our CEO of the day drove the engineers to make it work on 50MHz (not 50 GHz - a slip of the tongue) Pentium PC's and over 14.4 kbps modems. But the overall infrastructure was just not there to let it become viable as a consumer in the 1996 time frame.Yes, having widely deployed broadband was one major contributor to the timing element that helped achieve Skype's immediate success. (I did have WebTalk running over a 56kbps modem on a 100MHz Pentium but it was challenging to carry on a conversation. Yet a few small businesses did adopt it.)
William talked about the importance of usability. "Just because it - VoIP - works is not enough. Users are fickle. You will lose a significant number of users at each step where the process of installing and completing a call may fail. The user experience is everything."
Dan York the security expert amongst us, got into a discussion of how Skype worked when offerings such as NetMeeting and CU CMe just did not get significant traction. Firewall traveral across NAT - a major failing of SIP, the first true high quality wideband codec, and Skype's inherent security are all features that impressed Dan.
But listen to the recording via the link/player on the Saunderslog post to get the full story, especially helpful for Skype employees involved in the Skype 4.0 beta.
And Happy Fifth Anniversary to Skype from all of us on the call! There are many challenges ahead as Skype liquifies communications - we look forward to the next generation of Skype under its new executive team. And thanks to the iotum team and SquawkBox producer Alec Saunders for making such a conversation feasible
What's the secret to your success in working at the world's leading net jobs?
Some figures on Skype?
Version 4.0 has been released. What are the main objectives?
What about the quality of Skype? Is it possible to further improve the quality of voice and video?
How will Skype be in 3 years?
What is the main competitor of Skype? Which one can take more shade to Skype in the coming years?
What is happening with Skype on mobile? Will you offer a Skype application on iPhone?
Do you think cell phones will be integrated into VOIP offers from three major french operators in one year? If so, obviously must we expect a minor webmobile revolution, be it in Blackberry or other iPhone?
If I remember rightly, one of the objectives of the acquisition of Skype by eBay was the integration of Skype on eBay ads and using Skype as a means of payment for small transactions. What about these two projects excited you at the time?
What's up with the payment between accounts via PayPal? Is this function properly used?
When will you be creating Skype shops powered by Zlio [an ecommerce service]?
Is there an advantage for Skype to be part of a group like eBay?
Is the future of Skype in the enterprise?
When will we see premium services such as "Call Management Center" in Skype?
Why does Skype not open its source code? (thus easing integration with professional CRM applications)
In newer versions, can a company deploy Skype without risk of using its full bandwidth (supernode)?
Why is Skype green?
Is Skype is ready to sponsor "blog words" podcasts by Presse-Citron made via Skype conference?
My feeling (purely an impression, I do not know the facts) is that Skype cruised for a number of years now, especially with the democratization of the "box" (that Free pioneered). Is the company aware of this phenomenon and how to account react? What is the future, what are the new challenges for VoIP?
Why not integrate (stop me if I say silly things if it is already) a function of recording audio conversations directly in the software without needing to use plugins (paying…). To make Interviews, for example, I remember having encountered this problem some time ago. Is this a legislative problem?
What is the real business model and how does Skype think it will monetize these future products / services?
The turnover of Skype must move from 60 to 200 million dollars [quarterly] (says the press). What areas of development have you chosen to achieve them?
Will Skype move to "free" calls to fixed lines (in France, Europe and other countries) as the free ISPs currently offer Skype with 60 minutes free per month? SkypeIn free?
What do you think of Loîc Lemeur's Seesmic project and do you see an advantage? an opening?
What's going on with the integration of video platforms into Skype?
Will we soon be able to post a video conversation on YouTube immediately with a single click?
Just a select few answers.
Stats...
It was officially 338 million users around the world.
The last quarter, about 29 million people across the world opened a Skype account.
It represents more than 5% of any long-distance communications throughout the world
Last year it made income of approximately $ 400 million. The last quarter, our turnover has increased by 51% over the same quarter in 2007 while generating a double-digit profitability.
Good to be in eBay?
Absolutely. Skype is now much more professional thanks to its integration into eBay. And at multiple levels: IT, Systems, HR, Legal, Finance, eBay has enabled Skype has become a global company with process, a world level team, while retaining the agility of a large startup. For example, PayPal has been a crucial partner to help us improve our system of payment on a global scale. In the same way, eBay has enabled us to attract top level talent at all levels. Our CEO is from eBay, for example, as are many members of the team Skype at all levels. Finally, and most importantly for us, eBay provides us with its unwavering support in this period of expansion and investment that we live at this time.
About Skype and enterprise bandwidth...
I can tell you that we have deployed Skype through eBay, or about 17000 employees throughout the world. At Skype, we rely almost 100% of our communications on Skype. From this point of view, we think Skype can already apply in the field of business, it's so secure. Each day we learn that large new accounts seek to deploy Skype on a large scale.
Competition...
We think firstly that the growth of Broadband is a good thing for us. From a strategic point of view, the rise of "triple and quadruple plays" will also push us to differentiate ourselves faster and not content ourselves to be less expensive. Hence the importance of video in our strategy, and to provide Skype beyond the computer on the mobile and other platforms. For example, we are already integrated on the Sony PSP and we are working with Intel in their Mobile Internet Device (IMD) platform.
My questions, following up...
How do you reinvigorate Skype's five-year-old brand?
How has Skype changed as a company since the founders left?
What capabilities might Skype buy through M&A?
How do you frame the opportunities for cooperating with legacy telcos (like the Skypephone alliance with Hutchinson/3) vs. competing with them (like US telcos lobbying congress for protection against Skype)?
Skype's technology architecture has built-in strengths and weaknesses which let it grow to this stage. What technologies must change for Skype to grow ten times in active users and usage?
What is Skype doing to talkify the web?
Are Skype's underlying technology prerequisites for (midband access, fast cpu, multicore cpu, desktop OSs that reserve resources for media apps, high end webcams, consumer routers that enable vs. hinder Skype) growing fast enough to support growth?
How are web services and platforming (think Ribbit) changing consumer VoIP?
Enterprise IT has a long checklist of features they demand, features they see in Cisco/WebEx and Microsoft products. Will Skype comply, increasing product complexity, integrating into enterprise telephone, billing, and identity systems? Or will Skype remain a team-level product?
Skype rose to fame on an instant messaging design. Which post-IM UI metaphors make sense? How many designs can one team support?
Human customer service is expensive. Does Skype have a paying customer service problem?
If Skype picked up 29 million new users in the last quarter, how many existing users stopped using Skype last quarter? Beyond the 29 million, how many people used Skype in the last quarter?
Several years ago, while skiing at Whistler, a member of our party broke her leg in the most remote (but still in-bounds) glacier (Blackcomb Glacier) with only one route in and out. Having cell phone access resulted in having the ski patrol on the scene within about five minutes and timely removal from the mountain to the hospital. It was critical that the cell phone rf sensitivity in this somewhat remote location was sufficient to make a call.
The past couple of weekends has found me in Ontario's summer cottage areas north of Toronto where distance, remoteness and low population density can provide significant challenges to a mobile phone's usefulness and service availability in emergencies. With no landline Internet connections available I left my laptop at home and tested the bounds of what I could follow simply using mobile devices. Amongst the issues I encountered were:
Battery: how long is battery life and how easily can you replace a battery?
Rf sensitivity: can I make a phone call with weak connectivity (<1 bar)?
Real time navigation: can I follow my progress in a boat as the boat moves along?
In my case I was traveling with both a Blackberry 8820 and iPhone 3G, each connected to the Rogers GSM 3G/EDGE network. The 8820 could only use EDGE for data but the voice channel was the same for both. My experiences:
Battery Life: the Blackberry was the clear winner requiring much less frequent charging (if at all) in a 2- to 3-day trip. But Blackberry is reknown for its battery management features; if desired as backup, you can take along charged replacement batteries.
Rf sensitivity: this one really surprised me but also says a lot about the iPhone 3G connection problems being reported. I was at a location on a small lake 6 km by air southwest of Gravenhurst, Ontario (location of the nearest tower) with less that one bar of reception and attempted to make phone calls. The iPhone came up with a screen announcing that it could not make a voice call while, sitting in the same seat, the Blackberry had no problems making a voice call - all over the same Rogers network via the same Rogers cell tower. Amongst the group I was visiting two other Verizon-enabled Blackberries could make calls through the local equidistant Telus cell tower while another person with an iPhone also could not make calls through the Rogers tower. As further affirmation of the Blackberry's superior rf sensitivity, when I drove into this location, the Blackberry was receiving updated Google Maps data (over EDGE) right up until I reached my destination.
Real time marine navigation: We also experienced some boat trips on Muskoka Lake, which is laden with many islands, bays and inlets, both large and small. On this popular lake with many cottagers there is good-to-excellent Rogers 3G coverage. Let's just say that on our first trip the boat's driver did not know the exact location of a marina we were seeking out. What I found was that while the satellite view of Google Maps on the Blackberry could provide very helpful location and direction information in real time, Google Maps on the iPhone could only provide occasional "static" information but not effectively track one's progress. On the other hand it has been known that iPhone is not capable of the real time navigation critical to the resolution of our situation. Asking a local cottager got us headed in the right direction towards the location of the marina but having real time navigation in Google Maps made it a significantly easier to reach our destination. As would be expected Google Maps does not provide complete marine navigation information such as depth isobars, underwater rock locations, etc. but, knowing the main channels, it became a critical support tool as we found our way.
My conclusions:
The 3G connectivity issues being reported for the iPhone probably involve both the rf sensitivity issue I experienced as well as carrier issues. By maintaining internal design control of the Blackberry's rf circuitry, RIM has brought into play 11 years of experience in developing wireless products. Contrary to other reports that attempt to lay the blame for iPhone 3G connectivity problems solely on the networks, the iPhone's device engineering, reportedly using a third party 3G chip, is a contributing issue to the problem. (During my time as a research physicist involving the design of rf detection circuitry, the rf sensitivity issue was a critical factor in detecting 13C signals using magnetic resonance spectroscopy for determining the molecular structure of drugs and other chemical formulations.)
Real time navigation is just not viable on the iPhone. Pretty Google Maps but if they cannot track your progress in real time, not a big help. Especially when you're lost on a lake with as many islands and inlets as Muskoka Lake. iPhone's GPS can find me the nearest five Tim Hortons locations but combine my boating experience with the repeatedly reported inability of the iPhone to multi-task effectively and you have to come to the conclusion the iPhone is simply lacking in processing speed to perform true on-the-go navigation.
And on long trips, away from a source for recharging, take along a couple of spare batteries.
Before every iPhone defender jumps on the bandwagon, I appreciate many of the iPhone's features. It's a great device for personal voice communications and and one way information delivery such as browsing activity and even receiving email (via GMail). But, it's not up to the capabilities and standards of the Blackberry line when it comes to needing robust communications and processing horsepower.
Bottom line: everybody worries about 911 access for providing emergency communications. But when you travel into more remote, weakly serviced areas you want the most robust mobile device for maintaining reliably effective voice and data communications when emergencies arise. In this case I want a Blackberry, thank you.
(Note: Nokia N95 testing is yet to occur due to limitations on the number of SIM's immediately available.)
Tags: Blackberry, iPhone, 3G, Rogers, Telus, Verizon, Research in Motion
Last winter, after Om Malik suffered at heart attack at New Year's, I authored a couple of guest posts for GigaOm discussing the challenges and reality of Skype on mobile devices (here and here). Recently I was asked to provide occasional (probably bi-weekly) posts for GigaOm on a regular basis.
The first post, Rogers Launches Blackberry Bold: More Anticipated Than the iPhone, Eh?, results from my attendance yesterday at the North American launch for the new Blackberry Bold. I'll have more to say about my personal iPhone experience as well as Blackberry experiences in future Skype Journal posts.
To his credit, Om has stopped smoking, implemented a fitness routine and changed his diet. But has he really, as claimed, been able to reduce his work hours? It is a credit to his team is that they can publish so profusely while keeping Om on a healthy regimen.
Update. Skype for iPhone 1.1.0.91. 
I never realized this but 
Download the latest
Skype
In this article, I will attempt to compare Skype for iPhone vs. Skype for Playstation Portable. I'll update this entry when the BlackBerry version becomes available. 
The iPhone and iPod Touch needs very little introduction. With a large touch screen display and portrait layout, it makes a very good UI candidate for Skype (much like its desktop counterpart). 
I love the convenience of having my beloved PSP-3000 as a gaming device and knowing it can also surf the web with Flash while keeping up with the communications needs via Skype. 
The one part I have to gripe about is the need of an external microphone. My 
Truphone, the internet telephony application for mobiles, has added AOL Instant Messenger to the list of IM systems it can interact with. Now, in addition to Google Talk, Skype, Windows Live Messenger, and Yahoo, you can chat with your AIM buddies while on Truphone on an iPod Touch or iPhone.
Tonight out at the "ShowStoppers" event at MacWorld in San Francisco, Skype announced the new 2.8 Beta for Mac OS X. The new version will apparently be available for download tomorrow, January 6, 2009, from Skype's website. [NOTE: I will update this post with the download link when it becomes available.] 
At MacWorld's Showstoppers event this evening 
We'll cover 
"Jobless" 
Truphone's announcements last week overcame a significant carrier resistance barrier to using VoIP-enabled services to reduce international calling costs. The key secret here was that it required the combination of Truphone's iPhone and iPod Touch applications along with the Apple Application program that leverages Apple's established carrier relationships to break this barrier.On Friday I was finally able to complete provisioning of Truphone on my iPhone. It happened at this time for three reasons:
iSkoot
Skypephone:
Vendor Relationship Management, putting people back in control of their identities and their relationships with companies. Sun Microsystems London. 
Swing by your 
- I was sending these IM messages "under duress" (and with about a 25% typing error rate).
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