According to the Dallas Morning News, Brian Woods, executive vice president of merchandising for the Dallas-based CompUSA, stated that VoIP will be the hottest sales category in the 2005 holiday season. I guess this CompUSA representative forgot that Microsoft is releasing the Xbox 360 this holiday season.

In any event, he said that he expects sales of products offering VoIP service to jump from from 3,500/month to 18,000/month - 25,000/month in November and December.
"It is the fastest-growing category at CompUSA. Why? In consumer lingo it is extremely cheap," Mr. Woods told attendees at a Metroplex Technology Business Council luncheon in Richardson.

Some more positive VoIP numbers... Also according to the Dallas Morning News article, British consultants Point Topic estimated last week that as of March 31, more than 11 million people worldwide were using retail telephone services using VoIP echnology. They claim that this is more than double the 5 million-plus using that type of communications as of June 30, 2004.

"The adoption rate has been very, very quick over the last several months. We've seen literally 500 percent, 700 percent increases over the last 90 days, and through the holidays, we expect voice over IP to probably be the hottest product within our building," he said.

On a side note, CompUSA stated that the popular, recently launched Sling Media Slingbox has surprised CompUSA by selling1,200 on the first day and 2,800 in the past nine days.. It allows users to take live or recorded television and transmit it anywhere in the world to a Windows computer connected to the Internet.