Mobile Phones vs Office Phones, is it a race?

There is no doubt many people would love one and only one phone for personal and business. The problem is, not one phone does everything that you need. Let's visit this concept:

- mobility is convenient and mobile phones are improving with larger color touch screens and much improved quality
- office desk phones have been improved with built in speaker phones and high quality, ability to run software applications, and personalization of these phones
- home phones have improved with multi-handset systems that cause much less interference between handset and base stations many with built in applications including caller ID

However, the requirements vary for each use and application and there are few people who can be totally satisfied for all applications using a single handset. Millions of people just like me love our iPhones and for most things can be very well suited as a desk set replacement, however, for business use it lacks easy basic transfer capabilities, its far too hard to do a 3-way conference call and can't do one larger than that, it's speaker phone is very weak and the screen although it is of high quality is not well suited to many day-to-day office routine activities.

The office desk phone has come down in price mostly driven by SIP standard (session initiation protocol) over IP networks for interoperability standards, but this also limits advanced features found in business telephone systems as proprietary systems always implement extensions overlapping the standards implementation. There is no mobility with desk phones except wireless 802.11 handsets that are more expensive per station because they always need a base station. Some companies have come out with wireless phones that work with both business phone systems (private branch exchange or PBX) and wireless carriers that suppot hand-offs when the user leaves the phone's range inside the business or home. This type of solution is few and far between today and is both expensive and requires cooperation of service providers who lose revenues and minutes when the user moves inside as a PBX extension.

Home phones are getting better and cheaper and the emergence of DECT wireless phones seem to work better than previous wireless handsets at home and "play nice" with home wireless networks.

So what's the problem? Let me count the ways. Many of my highly respected and some well-known friends and colleagues are loud (Twitter, blogs, conversations) about not wanting or needing a desk phone. They want one wireless phone, iPhone-like, that does it all. Some consultants and road warriors may have taken this step. But most people will not quite yet.

I have been collecting unscientific data from Twitter and Facebook survey's of strangers and friends and followers who are happy to provide their input. Although I have access to purchased research and privileged access to real users, vendors of phones, and customers of business phone systems, I believe my method provides as good of a cross section as one might find. Here are some comments in abridged form:

- I love my cell phone but when I have an important business call, I always say, "Can you call me back on my landline?"

- A job hunter (one of my good friends) says, "I'd never have a cell phone interview call for a new position, I insist we set up a time when I have a landline!"

- One of my contributors said, "I am in the VoIP business, can provide free SIP trunk to the house, connected to an Asterisk PBX but my wife insists a good old phone company connection with ma Bell!"

- One of my favorite analysts friends says, "We'll only need one phone, and it will be the cell phone. But it needs to access our enterprise network and tools!"

- One responded to me with this note: "We all know it will be a cell phone that wins this battle, so why don't you product strategy guys face the facts and make it happen faster?"

(My answer was when no one buys phones anymore except for cell phones. Today, I do listen to my customers!)

- One of my followers and resellers says, "It will look a lot like a cell phone... because it will be!"

- One person said, "I was needing G.722 (new HD Codec for IP Phones) which takes almost everything out of play!"

So herein lies the facts. Business phones, desktop phones are being sold in huge numbers. At the office, I have a growing number of IP phone partners most selling record numbers of handsets. Newer desktop phones are beginning to look and sound different with HD (High definition audio), larger screens - like netbook PC size screens - with the usual hard phone buttons, mixed with soft programmable buttons/keys and are completely embedded systems that run purpose-built processors and software. In meetings, on airplanes, at tradeshows and conferences, we all have our cell phones with many also having their laptops or netbooks - multiple devices, multiple phone numbers, multiple phone bills and briefcases or purses to carry it all. It's tiring.

What do I mean? Let's have some fun using one end of the spectrum. Your IT departments says, "You get a softphone for your laptop!" Its your office phone. I'll give you a headset. Your PC needs to be on 24/7. We don't reimburse wireless so if you get one, you are on your own. When you have a conference call, either use the one conference room with a Polycom conference phone or gather everyone 'round your PC to use your softphone or your Skype account! Think I am kidding? Well, think again, it's happening in places.

I do believe these IT managers will be back to buy new desk phones and maybe even a cell phone for road warriors just not for everyone. At the same time, newer desk phones are in development. They will look different than today's phones, but who'd have thought this would even be a discussion a few short years ago.

On the other end of the scale, some businesses are putting in all HD phones with high end video phones for executives. For all of you who have moved to HDTV, there are many new fans of HD Phones and this is driving newer, HD phones, higher priced and with higher quality clear audio and mostly available in desktop phones. These HD phones are disrupting the traditional desktop phone market.

In my sample of 40 respondents, here is my split:

1. 10% want cell phones only in 5 years
2. 60% want landlines always to be present
3. 25% said basically that we will have multiple handsets, each for different special-purpose built purposes
4. 5% said they don't care

All in all, this was a fun and informative exercise and since this is important to me from a business standpoint, I can use this information but from a personal standpoint, we can all learn from what is actually happening in the workplace and in the consumer market as the phone becomes as important to carry as a wallet, purse, briefcase, backpack - whatever you use for carrying all your important personal and work items.

What do you think?
What is your preference?
How many phones do you have?
What will be the split of phones in 5 years?

Open Source Download - Buy or Not?
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We like the folks who do (buy something)

We like the folks who don't (buy anything)

We like the folks who say they will and then decide they won't

But the folks we like the most, and we know you'll think we're right, are the folks who say they usually don't, but today they think they might!

- - - -

What would the downloader possibly buy today?

1. TDM gateway boards

2. G.729 Licenses

3. Voice Prompts

4. Speech to text channels

5. Text to speech channels

6. Support

7. Pre-loaded software on a hardware appliance platform

8. Training and certification

9. Commercial software license

10. Consulting

So, happy downloading:

Free Source Code - www.asterisk.org

Free Distribution - www.asterisknow.org

Free IP PBX, not open - www.switchvox.com/sv?page=free_edition_faq

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Stop by and learn more about us at www.digium.com

Resellers A-plenty

Last year at this time we were just defining the authorized reseller program. We were gearing up for a whole new world coming from pure open source software with some commercial business to today where we have much more open source Asterisk and exponentially more commercial Asterisk business. This is all good as Digium continues to invest in open source and commercial development.

Well, this year we have implemented what we believe to be a pretty substantial program with solid benefits to the resellers and the best open source telephony products out there.

So being attacked by competition is the sincerest form of flattery - being called out by a competitor on a press release gives us free press. Marketing 101: get your facts straight. Marketing 102: Don't call out your competitors. Especially when the story is not really 100% accurate, at least by company records. Good thing we don't list all the resellers that have signed up with us who currently are selling and phasing out other telephony systems today - from open source competitors to tier one IP Telephony leaders. Good for us. In the past 3 months, we have signed up and qualified over 250 data and voice resellers and continue to work closely with our new distributors to recruit resellers. Revenues reflect the success.

Our goal is to be the most channel friendly company in our segment. Offering best margins, great support, and best-in-class products to enable successful growth.

We love the channel, we love our strategy and we are making huge inroads while we continue to set sales and growth records.

Check us out: www.digium.com

Switchvox Momentum

Today was quite a day. Costco came in to provide free food - not the 'good for you' kind but it was good with a strong cup of coffee from Aroma's, the coffee shop at Digium.

We had our usual meetings and then we discussed some new programs we are planning and getting ready for promoting Switchvox, an Asterisk-based powerful business phone system. This SOHO and SMB VoIP product family is unreal. It's now our standard business IP PBX at Digium. We each use the Switchboard, which provides an interface directly to Salesforce.com and Googlemaps, so when a call comes in thats in my data base it brings up their record plus places a pin on Google maps from caller id location. Check it out - here are some screenshots: http://www.switchvox.com/sv?cmd=screenshots. here is a presence based receptionist screen: http://www.switchvox.com/sv?cmd=screenshots. And many user and admin screens are located at this URL.

There is also a free version to try - enjoy: http://www.switchvox.com/sv?page=free_edition

This new article talks about an Asterisk-based PBX, but this customer is talking about his Switchvox system: http://vonmag.com/editorial/whatworks/grinding-out-a-phone-solution

Enjoy reading the information at the above links. This system deserves your attention. Powerful, advanced web 2.0 mashups, and a great business phone system based on Asterisk and IP.