Facebook gets Voice powered by T-Mobile

Well iam back, it’s been such a long time since I updated this blog. Professional and personal commitments kept me away from updating the blog. Sincere apologies to all the folks who had sent me mails requesting to start blogging again. Well Iam back. I guess year 2011 is turning out be to exciting times for startups. BTW, I have changed my blog address from latestgeeknews to 4Gwireless for all the good reasons. More on that later.


Coming back to the hot news that hit the stand today, T-Mobile and Vivox launched one touch- calling within Facebook called Bobsled. The new application provides 500 million Facebook users to call each other without worrying about knowing each other’s phone number. Bobsled is not the first application to provide this type of service. Jajah, Vonage and others have launched similar service earlier. In fact Skype and Facebook were rumored to be working closely to bring Voice and SMS integration. Also couple of months back there were rumors about Facebook testing its own Voice Chat.


So what does Bobsled offer, for now using Bobsled app Facebook users can place voice calls to all their friends through the Facebook chat with just one click. The application eliminates the need for dialing/remembering the phone number. Simply clicking the friends name will start the conversation. So with this app, users can call any of their across the globe for free. In addition to voice calling, the application will let you leave a voice message to your friends and family when they are not available. A cute little feature to leave happy birthday, anniversary etc voice greetings and post the greeting on friend’s wall for all to hear.

The initial feature set of Bobsled is limited. However in the near future, T-Mobile plans to unveil Video chat, call termination to mobile and landline and offer applications on smartphones and tablets across various mobile platforms.

Though we have seen similar services on Facebook, this one is big and important because it’s coming from an operator. What this means is that Operators are getting serious about Social Integration, and Bobsled app is a great leap forward in that direction. I was skeptical about voice calling widgets on Facebook few years back, iam thinking positive this time. I still root for Video Chat and am sure Facebook is working on it as I write this article.

Are we heading towards a new Bubble?

Two big titans( John Doerr and Fred Wilson) of Venture Capitalists industry discuss the current state of startups and whether we are heading towards Bubble or Boom. Check out the video below.

Finally Google Voice app approved by Apple

Here you go guys, Apple finally approved Google Voice iPhone application. This is definitely a big leap forward for Apple and Google. Earlier Apple had banned Google Voice application citing various reasons. As we all know FCC got involved in the whole fiasco and it took so long for Apple to approve the app. This is going to be a big blow to operator. Now I can use Google Voice App to send and receive SMS message for free. Yeh that’s a killer deal.

It took almost 16 months for Apple to approve this app. Things got murkier after the FCC got involved. We got to know lot more about Apple’s relationship with AT&T and each other. Initially AT&T was blamed for blocking Google Voice App as it was eating into their SMS and voice revenue. However there were other theories that surfaced during the course of time. Initial Apple’s stance was that Google Voice app was exact replica of its own built-in calling system.

Following features are provided by the Google Voice iPhone App:
• Cheap rates for international calls
• Free text messaging to U.S. numbers
• Voicemail transcription
• Display your Google Voice number as caller ID when making calls
With the Push Notification enabled, the app will notify whenever there is a new text message or Voice mail.


With both the service and app are free. What more can anyone ask for. So just go ahead and download the app and enjoy the free ride until it lasts.

About Steve Jobs from his Boss

Its been a long time since I wrote anything about Steve Jobs. So here you go, Check out this article, It’s an insight about Steve Jobs from his old Boss.

Apple extends its Video calling to Mac

Today Apple announced the public beta of FaceTime for Mac, a new application using which Mac users can video call iPhone, iPod touch and Mac users. So looks like Apple is pretty serious about its Video calling service “FaceTime”. I guess Facetime has brought in some momentum to the consumer Video calling service. Though video calling was not something new that Apple invented, it existed even before Apple ventured into it. However FaceTime literally gave a facelift to consumer video calling service. If Apple can support Group Video calling, then it’s a perfect vehicle to target enterprise segment. Beware Skype, Cisco, Logitech and slew of other companies operating in enterprise video market.

Here is what Steve Jobs has to say about FaceTime:

“FaceTime makes video calling to or from mobile devices easy for the first time,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We’ve sold more than 19 million FaceTime-ready iPhone 4 and iPod touch devices in the past four months, and now those users can make FaceTime calls with tens of millions of Mac users.”

Though Apple claims that FaceTime uses standard protocols, it is yet to publish any documents supporting the statement. Any inter-op with Facetime will open up huge opportunity for developers and other video service providers. Unless Apple sees a huge potential in inter-op, I doubt they will share all the technical information about Facetime.

Skype Journal compares FaceTime and Skype. Looks like Skype beats Apple with respect to quality and additional features. Dan York has hands on information about FaceTime on Mac.

Teens Prefer SMS, Hate calling

According to Nielsen report Teens prefer Texting than calling. The amount of text message teens send is unbeleivable. They send and receive on average 3,339 SMS texts a month. So looks like the most popular activity with teens are sending/receiving text messages. Infact female teens sends and recive an average of 4,050 texts per month. Compared to SMS texting, Voice usage is very low among teens. So texting activity has taken precedence over voice.


Some highlights of the news:

• 94% of teen mobile subscribers self-identify as advanced data users, turning to their cellphones for messaging, internet, multimedia, gaming, and other activities like downloads.
• While teen usage does not reach levels of activity seen by young adults, it has increased substantially versus Q2 last year, from 14 MB to 62 MB.
• This fourfold increase in data usage is the largest jump among all age groups.
• Much of this boost is led by males, who are more gadget-savvy and consume 75 MB of data, versus 17 MB in Q2 last year. Teen females use about 53 MB of data, compared to 11 MB a year ago.
• Software downloads among teen subscribers who use apps enjoyed a solid 12% increase in activity versus last year, from 26% to 38%. This includes popular apps such as Facebook, Pandora or YouTube. Usage of the mobile web has also surpassed activity on pre-installed games, ringtone downloads and instant messaging, too. Other mobile activities like mail and text alerts have also seen significant growth.

LightSquared LTE plans are gaining momentum

With the recent inflow of $850 million debt, LightSquared announced vendor partners who will provide network, chip and devices for its ambitious wholesale LTE launch . The overall LTE network will be constructed, operated and maintained by Nokia Siemens Networks. This is a huge deal for NSN. The total budget to build, operate and maintain is around $7-8 billion dollars. The overall network will consist of 40,000 base stations and cover 92 percent of the US population by 2015.

The Chipset and devices will be provided by Qualcomm and Nokia Corp respectively. With CDMA almost nearing its death, Qualcomm must be betting big on LTE chipsets. Most of the folks still don’t believe this is gone happen, and feel it’s just hogwash and will never see the light of the day. Iam cautious in my opinion. It’s an ambitious plan. Building a network from scratch is not a trivial task. For now, I will just say Kudos to the team and wish they succeed.

Verizon gearing up for iPhone launch next year

As speculated earlier, According to Wall street journal, Apple is making a CDMA version of iPhone that Verizon Wireless will sell early next year. So this means an end to the exclusivity with AT&T, and a huge blow to AT&T. Too me its no brainer decision. If Apple stays with AT&T, they are going to loose big-time to Android. This should be one of the compelling reasons why Apple should be spreading their wings across multiple operators. Launching with Verizon is going to be a big leap for Apple in terms of volume and revenue. The plan is to begin mass production of new iPhones by end of the year, and release the same in the first quarter of 2011. The new iPhone will resemble the iPhone 4 currently sold by AT&T.

Some interesting tidbits from the article:

At a press conference Wednesday, Verizon Communications Inc. President Lowell McAdam declined to comment on whether his company would soon sell an iPhone. "At some point our business interests are going to align," he said, referring to Apple. "I fully expect it, but I don't have anything to say."

A spokeswoman for Apple declined to comment. The Wall Street Journal in March reported on Apple's plans to build an iPhone that works on code division multiple access, or CDMA, technology used by carriers like Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel Corp.

Toni Sacconaghi, a Sanford Bernstein analyst, estimates Verizon could add more than 10 million U.S. iPhone customers, adding it could help stem the rapid adoption of devices that run Android.

According to ComScore, as of August 2010, AT&T has 38% of the smartphone share while Verizon holds 26.8%. A total of 68.7% of AT&T smartphones users are iPhone. As you can see clearly, a majority of AT&T smartphone market is of iPhone. Launching iPhone on its network will give Verizon a big boost in its smartphone market and also increase the overall market share. It will be a WIN-WIN for both Verizon and Apple.

Verizon launching iPhone has been in the news for quite sometime now. There’s no Smoke without fire. Iam more than positive that this is credible news and would be surprised if Verizon doesn’t launch iPhone next year.

Android a serious threat to iPhone and RIM

This news should come as a shocker to Apple and RIM folks. According to Nielsen , Android is now the most popular operating system among people who bought a Smartphone in the past six months. Blackberry RIM and Apple iOS are fighting each other for the second spot. In the past six months ending August 10, Android accounts for 32 percent of the smart phones while iPhone accounted for 25 percent and Blackberry 26 percent.

Among all smartphone owners, RIM still rules the roost with a total market share of 31%. Apples iPhone comes second with 28% followed by Android with 19%. Surprisingly Nokia is no where in the list.

Cisco should buy Skype not Facebook

Facebook and Skype are planning a deep integration partnership, which will allow its users to communicate with each other using voice chat or sms messaging. Sounds like an audacious plan. For the most part this is definitely good news to FB users. So Facebook has started adding value to its platform by providing communication utilities to its users. The strategy of Facebook is not to reinvent the wheel and instead use one of the existing products that can cater its users. It’s a smart move. Building a communication platform for 500 million users is not a trivial task. Also, Skype is the best when it comes to Internet Telephony. So the marriage is perfect.

Skype currently has more than 560 million registered users. So with facebook counting more than 500 million users, we are talking about a total of more than billion users. Off course most of the users could be registered on both Skype and Facebook. Apart from Voice and messaging, Skype brings the video chat, which is gaining momentum. Thanks to Apples FaceTime. Both these companies are very aggressively positioning themselves as the next generation communication and messaging platform.

So does it mean Facebook should buy Skype as Om suggest? I don’t think it makes sense. The first question I would ask anyone suggesting Facebook to buy Skype is-
How many FB users currently communicate to each other using Voice Chat. We all know what happened to some of the VoIP applications on Facebook who tried the same communication game and turned out to be a disaster. Even Skype had its own Skypeme app on Facebook, which didn't do well either. Some startups even closed shop. Even if FB users use Voice Communication, the call should be delivered via SkypeOut or SkypeIn in order for Facebook to make any money. Now this is a big stretch in my opinion. If its purely a VoIP call, there is no money.

Instead of Facebook buying Skype, I would still bet big on Cisco buying Skype. I think Skype fits well in the Unified communication arena. With Cisco very aggressive in the Unified Communication space, this makes a killer combo. Also Cisco doesn’t need to fight hard to enter the communication space, with Skype acquisition; they will have instant access to 560 million users. And Skype Video will blend very well with the telepresence and other UC related Video communication.