AI
Tuesday, December 20, 2005 4:15:36 PM
GOOG playing catchup... again?
VoIP Market Seen Splitting Into Access, Applications
Forbes.com, Kate DuBose Tomassi, 12.20.05, 3:54 PM ET
After an "eventful week" in Voice over Internet Protocol, Merrill Lynch analyst Glen Campbell concluded "we continue to believe that VoIP, particularly with the portals and Skype now competing for leadership, will separate the access and applications businesses over time."
EBay (nasdaq: EBAY - news - people ) completed the acquisition of Skype in October.
Last week, "Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ) launched its mobile e-mail service in the U.S. and entered exclusive negotiations with Time Warner (nyse: TWX - news - people ) for a 5% stake in AOL," the analyst said in a report.
"While there are many reasons for Google to court AOL, an important implication is that Google might pull AOL, with its huge instant-message user base, out of the Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people )-Yahoo! (nasdaq: YHOO - news - people ) orbit in favor of its open-standards approach," said Campbell. "Communications applications (instant messaging in particular) have enormous network effects. The established portals and Skype use proprietary protocols for voice communications and have an important head start; Google is playing catch-up very aggressively, it appears," he said.
In other VoIP news this week, Vonage launched the UTStarcom (nasdaq: UTSI - news - people ) F-100, a Wi-Fi telephone. Microsoft announced plans for a "PC-to-phone service, to be launched in 2006, in partnership with MCI (nasdaq: MCIP - news - people ), said the analyst. And on Dec. 13, Yahoo! announced its VoIP launch, he said.
http://www.forbes.com/2005/12/20/voip-google-aol-1220markets12.html?partner=yahootix
VoIP Market Seen Splitting Into Access, Applications
Forbes.com, Kate DuBose Tomassi, 12.20.05, 3:54 PM ET
After an "eventful week" in Voice over Internet Protocol, Merrill Lynch analyst Glen Campbell concluded "we continue to believe that VoIP, particularly with the portals and Skype now competing for leadership, will separate the access and applications businesses over time."
EBay (nasdaq: EBAY - news - people ) completed the acquisition of Skype in October.
Last week, "Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ) launched its mobile e-mail service in the U.S. and entered exclusive negotiations with Time Warner (nyse: TWX - news - people ) for a 5% stake in AOL," the analyst said in a report.
"While there are many reasons for Google to court AOL, an important implication is that Google might pull AOL, with its huge instant-message user base, out of the Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people )-Yahoo! (nasdaq: YHOO - news - people ) orbit in favor of its open-standards approach," said Campbell. "Communications applications (instant messaging in particular) have enormous network effects. The established portals and Skype use proprietary protocols for voice communications and have an important head start; Google is playing catch-up very aggressively, it appears," he said.
In other VoIP news this week, Vonage launched the UTStarcom (nasdaq: UTSI - news - people ) F-100, a Wi-Fi telephone. Microsoft announced plans for a "PC-to-phone service, to be launched in 2006, in partnership with MCI (nasdaq: MCIP - news - people ), said the analyst. And on Dec. 13, Yahoo! announced its VoIP launch, he said.
http://www.forbes.com/2005/12/20/voip-google-aol-1220markets12.html?partner=yahootix
