Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons., 1949
Popular Mechanics
Dear Vorticians,
I love that prediction from Popular Mechanics because it shows the dangers of trying to extrapolate our future condition from our current knowledge base, although it seemed like the first ‘portable’ computer that I used regularly – the Teleram PortaBubble – still weighed about 1.5 tons in the early 1980s. The PortaBubble (did anyone else use one of these?) was about the size of one of your rolling suitcases today and had a screen the size of a postcard. It also had the very, very annoying habit – particularly for a long-winded writer – of seizing up when its tiny memory was consumed. You’d have four-fifths of a great (well, in my opinion) story written and … suddenly, the only thing you could do was shut the PortaBubble off and start from scratch.
If you dig back a few years, you’ll probably find similar types of quotes from similarly smart sources about the limitations and disadvantages of VoIP, commentary that seems equally quaint and silly in this era of VoIP’s rapid adoption. A couple of things I witnessed at this week’s DEMO Mobile conference in La Jolla indicated just how quickly VoIP is eating up the telecom landscape.
You may recall that just about one year ago, I first wrote about Skype, the company offering free software that enables calls over the Internet. Skype celebrated its first anniversary in August and is close to celebrating the 22 millionth download of the software. Without any advertising, the company has 10 million registered users around the globe, and it now supports Windows, Pocket PC, Mac and Linux clients. At DEMO Mobile, where the Pocket PC version was released, Skype employees, using wireless devices, set up a conference call with London-based CEO Niklas Zennstrom – co-creator of KaZaA. Just click and talk, with pretty good quality.
Skype users can only call other Skype users today but the company is working on software that will enable users to call regular phones (at a low cost). The company plans to make money by charging for value-added services, such as voicemail, and as the user base grows, Skype’s got a heck of an audience to sell into. Asked by DEMO Mobile host Chris Shipley whether they’ve used Skype, about a quarter of the audience members raised their hands. One great application: Avoiding the telephone charges in fancy hotels like the one hosting DEMO Mobile.
I also spent some time with Linksys founder Victor Tsao in a high-tech living room display that the company, now owned by Cisco, had set up at the conference. While my eyes kept getting drawn over to the giant (truly, ridiculously huge) television set, the real revelations were the cool wireless devices Linksys was showing off. One device pulls music off your PC and relays it to your stereo system, another takes photos and music and delivers them to the digital TV. Yet another device enables you to create a small home storage network so multiple users can share common drives. But what really struck me was a small, cheap (under 60 bucks) adapter into which you can plug your existing portable phone and send phone calls over the Internet, thanks to a partnership with VoIP service provider Vonage.
I first talked about Vonage at the same time I began discussing Skype. Vonage works over a broadband connection and, unlike Skype, the company has launched a massive marketing campaign urging consumers to free themselves from those old world telcos.
It’s working. When I first wrote about Vonage in June 2003, the company had 30,000 lines in service and 1.5 million calls per week. Today, Vonage has 240,000 lines in service and is growing at 25,000 lines per month. Unlike Skype, these are paying customers. The company just received $105 million in Series D venture funding – yes, that is $105 million in VC funding. Sounds like the days of the CLEC boom.
Vonage service is being marketed in 7,000 Office Depot stores and Linksys’ Tsao says that his sales team has upped sales estimates on the VoIP/Vonage adapter I just mentioned, four times in the two months that it’s been available.
Remember when people said that converging voice and data was too difficult technically? Remember when they said that the data guys just didn’t understand voice, with all its complexity and its quality-of-service requirements? Remember when they said that customers wouldn’t put up with lower quality? Remember when they said the Internet just wasn’t reliable enough for voice calls?
Remember when they thought there was a world market for no more than five computers (IBM’s Thomas Watson), that you would never want a computer at home (DEC’s Ken Olsen), that you would never need more than 640K bytes of RAM (Microsoft’s Bill Gates)?
Ya gotta be really careful what you predict.
Geoff Moore and I will keep that in mind when VORTEX 2004 hits the stage in less than a month. If you’re coming, you should book your hotel room soon because we’re running out of space at the lovely Bacara Resort and Spa. Go to http://www.vortex.net to register and get a roof over your head.
Next week, I’ll be back with some insights from HP’s top tech honcho Shane Robison, who’s one of our featured speakers at VORTEX 2004. Between then and now, you can always reach me at jgallant@vortex.net.
Bye for now!
