FaceTime and VoIP
Apple has announced FaceTime for the new iPhone 4 which will feature video calling between iPhone 4 phones over a WIFI network. This is an amazing announcement and an exciting new feature for the latest iPhone, but Steve mentioned that in 2010, of which we are half over with at the date of this announcement, Apple will ship tens of millions of FaceTime devices. His careful wording makes it clear that the iPhone 4 is not to be the only FaceTime capable product from Apple to ship in 2010. Likely a new iPod touch will ship and possibly an upcoming revision of the iPad will ship this year. Analysts don't see this adding up to tens of millions of units. One additionally point Steve mentioned in the Keynote was a list of the technologies used by FaceTime, all of which are open standards, and that Apple was going to submit FaceTime as a new standard to work with other vendors in the industry. This is exciting news.
The standards used for FaceTime are all well known standards used in Voice over IP today meaning it will be trivial for existing VoIP manufacturers to work with the FaceTime standard. Expect to see this first in softphones meaning that every Apple MacBook, MacBook Pro and iMac as well as any Mac with a new Apple Cinema display or an iSight camera or a third party compatible camera would be able to use a softphone application with a VoIP provider and should be able to interact with iPhone 4 devices with full FaceTime functionality.
We expect Open Source phone systems based on Asterisk, such as Digium's Switchvox, will be among the first to support this new standard. While VoIP has been making great progress transforming the business phone industry, Apple has not played a part in this at all. In typical Apple fashion, they are entering the enterprise in a surprise fashion and yet are still dictating the way the game will be played moving forward. We expect FaceTime to have a dramatic impact on conference calling within the next year.
Does this herald the future of Mac OS X Server? Will the next release provide a voice component to Apple's server offering? Whether Apple does so or not, FaceTime is destined to change the game and push the technology to a level Cisco, Polycom and others have never been able to achieve.
For information on a modern Unified Communications solution for your business using open standards and the latest features including iPhone integration, contact Sollos Technology Solutions today.
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