I attended the session entitled Future Trends at ITEXPO. Seeing as it was the dreaded “early session” I wasn’t sure what to expect in terms of audience numbers, but I was happy to find a session room with lotsof eager attendees filling the room. The session was moderated by Matt Clark of Deloitte Financial Advisory Services and featured Richard Birckbichler of Solacom, Aron Rosenberg of SightSpeed, and Jim McLoughlin of Worldgate, makers of the Ojo video phone.

 

The general feeling among all the panelists was that video was the key application that will dominate the future landscape of communications.

 

Before jumping in to talk about video, Solacom’s Birckbichler spoke at length about the evolution of the communications lifestyle and his belief in the future of voice over instant messenger (VoIM).

 

“Voice over IM should be considered a major element going forward,” he said.

 

He noted that there are up to 11 million VoIP users and somewhere from 850 million to 1 billion IM users today. And regarding VoIM, it’s taken only 18 months to cross the 100 million user threshold.

 

Birckbichler also touted WiMAX as a technology to watch, being driven by the CLEC market.

 

Rosenberg spoke next and he gave a brief background of SightSpeed, explaining that they offer consumer-based IP-based video and voice services available to anyone, anywhere.

 

He spoke about the trend that live video is already creeping in to television and media today. He mentioned examples such as Nickelodeon’s MeTV, and MTV’s Total Request Live, which features a “webcam wall” that allows viewers to participate in the show via “webcam wall” and how this is breaking down another barrier and bring in the end users into the programming.

 

Rosenberg discussed the fact that quality is paramount.

 

McLoughlin anchored the conversation and agreed that video telephony is a true revolution in communication, and that societal forces are at work, changing the behavior of the consumer to be more willing to see the person they are speaking to via video.

 

He discussed some market trends, telling the audience that residential VoIP will continue to grow over next few years, and that we are witnessing an increase in video phone sales as well. According to McLoughlin, today’s market potential is at about 4 million video phones, but that the market is expected to ramp up quickly to over ten million by 2010.

 

Overseas is quicker to adopt this type of technology, he said.

 

He discussed several reasons for the increased interest in video phone technology, including:

YouTube and MySpace have made personal video more important than it used to be, and generational changes are at work as well. Creating/generating your own content is much more important to the next generation.

 

So according to today’s panelists the future is all about video communications.