We recently spoke with Donovan Jones, president and CEO at CounterPath to catch up on his company's progress with fixed-mobile convergence. CounterPath provides service providers, enterprises and OEMs with desktop and mobile software products that are integrated with voice, video, presence and instant messaging applications across both fixed and mobile networks. It has an impressive customer list that includes AT&T, Verizon, British Telecommunications, Deutsche Telekom, Cisco, Mitel and Nortel.

In the new product category, CounterPath has added an enterprise- and carrier-grade softphone for Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Exchange to its Bria softphone application. Bria is designed to make VoIP and video-over-IP calls easier by allowing users to see when contacts are available and send instant messages. The new “Bria Add-In” brings client capability for Microsoft Outlook without the need for Microsoft’s Office Communications Server (OCS).

CounterPath also recently added “Quick Conference” - a meet-me audio conferencing feature that can be scaled for small, medium or large businesses at “about one-third the price of competing solutions,” according to Jones. In the initial release, the feature is offered as a desktop software addition, although it will be offered in the future as a mobile phone client on devices that use Symbian, BlackBerry, or Windows Mobile operating systems.

Commenting on FMC trends, Jones sees his clients increasingly leveraging desktop to mobile applications, then moving toward bringing the desktop to mobile devices via the Web. He also noted that the social networking phenomenon is becoming increasingly mobile both for consumers and for the enterprise. And, in the longer term Jones expects high definition video on mobile devices although he believes (and we agree) that mobile HD will happen in Asia and Europe first given that these regions are ahead of the United States in supporting 4G mobile networks.

Steve Taylor is president of Distributed Networking Associates and publisher/editor-in-chief of Webtorials. Larry Hettick is a principal analyst at Current Analysis.