VoIM is not an area I have written about too often but it is certainly a space I believe has tremendous opportunity for growth. Certainly this market is bigger than most realize. In fact in a recent article by Stéphane Marceau she pointed out a number of facts that may make you wonder why this area of technology hasn’t received more press.
For example:
- The battle for VoIP supremacy has just begun
- Microsoft enjoys a massive user base of some 185 million Instant Messaging users Yahoo! is at nearly 100 million
- AOL has nearly 50 million users mainly in the
. - Google has recently started to build its own user base through GoogleTalk, which is a very distant fourth.
Other salient points from the article:
Talking on the phone is a very personal and core human behavior in industrialized societies. The average broadband user spends around 25 per cent of their communication time sending emails and Instant Messages so PC-based communications have also become a core behavior. Nonetheless, the remaining communication time (other than face-to-face) is voice through mobile and fixed phones (75 percent of total communication time representing a staggering 12 to 15 hours per month).
To learn more about this market as well as the killer application for VoIM read the full article titled,
Skype and Other Voice over IM Services: Explosive and Disruptive Platforms.
