Will the Fring iPhone release hurt Fring?
Fring was first of the gates last week with its iPhone application that only works on jailbroken phones.
It got thousands of mentions and obviously kudos to Fring for its bravery in being first.
In my opinion (and as a huge fan of Fring) I think they may have hurt the product and the company, I confirmed this assumption on a long call with one of the other companies which have the product ready but are waiting for Apple apps store to open in July.
I hope that Apple will not look unfavourably upon Fring for jumping the gun for a bit of publicity.
Why do you think that this will hurt the company fring? Its just a port of their program to the iphone, what is great about it is that it is the first program to bring true voip capabilities to the iphone. I do not see the point in delaying such a product to be launched in the apple apps store, as it is well within apples reach to create such a program, but certainly not in their interest as they are getting revenue from phone calls made with (legitimate) iphones on contract. I am confident that any such product will not be allowed on the apple app store. While I can’t blame companies for trying to make quick money, such as the original iphone unlock program, it’s great to see a company keeping such a great product free.
As I said Patrick I love Fring and use it all the time, my point is that this may hurt Fring more than it helps Fring in Apple’s eye, its certainly no reflection on Fring or their amazing product.
As you know only 20% of iPhones are unlocked and if my train of thought is correct Fring may have signed away an option to get at that other 80% with this move.
That’s an interesting point you have Pat, however wouldn’t you think that any voip solution whether fring or any other company would be blocked out with a future iphone firm update?
The following is just my opinion… assume that no voip solution existed for the iphone. Then when the app store comes around, a company (such as fring) brings out a voip solution.. Apple has full control of what goes onto the app store, this is just my opinion now, but I think that there is no way that apple would allow such a voip solution onto the iphone.. This is for 2 reasons - all operators that apple is in partnership with would object to such a convenient voip setup, effectively cutting them out of revenue for calls - this fring effectively makes the $99 dollar package/month in the states redundant - on the other package - for $45 a customer can call as many numbers as they want - bearing in mind that several voip operators have free calls to american landlines AND mobiles (this is unlike ireland, i’ve yet to come across one that offers free calls to irish mobiles) and so there is no incentive for a customer to sign up to the more expensive package as the data plan is unlimited (except here in ireland) and so they can make calls as often as they wish. Secondly, apple is (i assume) getting a very significant revenue from all mobile calls made from iphones. This is a deal made with the operators they are partnered with. If everyone utilised voip, this revenue stream would be cut off. This is not in Apples interest, or any operators interest.
Another point worth looking would be apple integrating voip themselves. It’s quite obvious why they haven’t, but now that fring is available, it may force apple to integrate it themselves? While this isn’t good for fring, they themselves are the catalyst to pushing forward telecommunications. Just to give an example, I used to use Fring a lot, strictly for the voip on an old nokia. Then I got an e65t, it had voip built in - so yes, admittedly I stopped using fring as it was far more convenient to use nokias built in voip, however while I’m not saying fring was the reason nokias got voip, they would be a catalyst for voip functionality built in. In the future, we may see voip functionality added to the iphone, or we could see apple also strongly pushing against it, barring any voip like programs from app store.
Frings software platform hasn’t changed in quite a while, as you know, this is just a port that fring has done, nothing on their program front has changed.
I’m not sure as to what the figures are for unlocked iphones, but if it’s 20%, that shows what an interest there is in using the phone with another network & using homebrew apps, marketing will have to play a large part here too, as i’m sure that a significant number of iphone users, and phone users in general don’t have any idea that software such as fring exists. It will be interesting to see how often it is downloaded, and to see how this issue fairs out!
As a sidenote, have you seen quake 3 on the iphone? It looks unreal!!
i guess to me VOIP is always a little bit about rebellion to begin with. so why would fring care at all about how apple feels? i certainly do not see fring as being a mainstream product of type i would expect to see in the apple store or any other formal setting. it is all about being a hack that not only needs a jailbroken iphone but uses workarounds in order to inter work with skype, msn, and yahoo IM and voice platforms. they have certainly never looked for thrid party approval before; why start now?