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September 02, 2005
Instant messaging replacing fixed line telephones?
Microsoft's this week made an announcement of buying closely held Teleo Inc., a San Francisco maker of voice over Internet protocol, or VOIP, technology, which allows users to make calls over the Internet to regular telephones, cell phones or PCs.
With Teleo's purchase Microsoft will be integrating VoIP to its MSN messenger product. Currently the Teleo solution is similar to popular Skype which runs a small dialer software on PC that allow initiation of calls. Just like Skype PC-to-PC calls are free but users have to prepay for making phone calls to regular phones.
Google also has made recent announcements about introducing instant messaging products that support voice communication. Many believe Microsoft's recent foray is in response to Google's move.
There were 62.72 million instant messenger users just in China in 2004 and this figure is expected to reach 82.67 million in 2005 and 103.34 million by 2006. With the addition of voice on such services will leave even less reason for many young people to maintain fixed line phone service. And since these voice-enabled services are making their way to PDAs that have wireless interface such instant messaging services may soon end up competing directly with cell phones.
Posted by admin at September 2, 2005 08:00 AM