Will VOIP survive in 2012?

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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