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Mobile video chatting requires shared technology to grow
By siliconindia
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Friday, 29 April 2011, 03:02 IST
Bangalore: Gone are the days when users could only make mobile-to-mobile calls within the same network. With due respect to what the market demanded, carriers allowed everyone to make calls to whomever they wanted. It's a history today. But the history needs to get repeated now to push mobile video chatting into mainstream.
Skype owned Qik updated its video chatting application for the Android platform earlier this week. The new version allows any Android device to conduct live, two-way video chats with other Android devices and the Apple iPhone. But to do that the iPhone must have Qik installed in it.
Apple devices like iPhone, iPad and iPod can conduct video chats with other Apple devices using the application called FaceTime. Even in this case, the iOS device needs to be connected to Wi-Fi.
Google has also come up with a video chatting application for Android 3.0 Honeycomb, which works only between Honeycomb devices. Fring also offers video chatting, IM, group video chatting, and other features to Android, iOS, and Symbian devices.
In all these cases the problem is that most of them require users to have the same software in their devices. In order to take mobile video conferencing in the forefront, tech vendors like Apple, Google and Skype will have to come up with a standard or they should share their technology to ensure interoperability.
According to a recent survey done by IT products and services firm CDW, almost 75 percent of enterprises will use videoconferencing by 2013. As Infonetics predicted in a study, Enterprises will spend $5 billion on videoconferencing and telepresence solutions in 2015.
What required now is a collective effort from of the industry. The issue needs a more serious effort from the application developers, platform developers, handset makers, and network operators so that a suitable solution is sorted out, irrespective of the device, platform, or network involved.