Without trying to state the obvious, VOIP has undergone a lot of
changes and threats in the last 18months. However, will it survice
beyond 2012?
My answer is "yes" but not in the shape we are familiar with.
Mobile VOIP, the new kid on the block, has chewed into a lot of
market space where "traditional" VOIP used to enjoy its market share.
Now "fixed" VOIP services seem to be feeling the same pain that fixed
network providers felt when Smart Devices showed up out of nowhere.
Quickly reducing costs/minute on calls equating to very little margins
that soon may shrink to zero and large looming threat of web-based
offerings (the likes of Facebook, Google, etc) that now are playing in a
space that was once a service provider domain.
It all adds up to the fact that VOIP companies (if not already) need
to start looking forward and adapting their business models accordingly.
Mobile VOIP is a shining example of this.
VOIP and providing rich media communications on Smart Devices (I dont call them mobile phones anymore, sorry!) is the now of
the future. Unless your business is thinking about how to take its
share of this market then your company is going to be faced with an
ever-shrinking bottom line until eventually VOIP is offered as a FREE
add-on, value-added service bundled into other services. That leaves
your VOIP-based business where exactly? You guessed it, out in the cold.
VOIP as such will be amalgamated into the 100,000's of Apps that can
be downloaded onto your Smart Device. Love it or hate it, thats the
future for VOIP.
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