VoIP on The iPhone Who’s Up First? Truphone Was and Likely Will Be

Back in September client Truphone stole the press coverage at Demo 2007 with their on stage demo of Truphone on the iPhone. A few days later Apple did yet another anti-hack lock down of the iPhone OS making life more difficult for all VoIP type players.

Yesterday Steve Jobs and the Cupertino Crew took center stage and unveiled the SDK for the iPhone and the world is waking up to the iPhone being a rather good device for VoIP.

Today, Truphone recognized Lord Jobs and made a very realistic statement. I say realistic because what Truphone demonstrated at Demo was Truphone running on the iPhone. It was call through, not call back or even call bridging ala Jajah, or a bunch of other players like them. That includes Jangl who is now looking to ride a wave on the coattail of what Apple is leading to.

Let’s face it. These plays use VoIP in the middle. But from where I sit there’s a lot more here to be exploited, and at risk, with the iPhone and with VoIP in general.

First off pal Om wrote a week or so ago that with the lowering of prices for mobile calling plans here in the USA that its time to ditch the PBX and go all mobile. I say, there’s a BIG OPPORTUNITY in that space to go Mobile VoIP. Currently no real mobile platform offers any kind of PBX like functionality. How do you ditch you Centrex or PBX service without the basic functionality they provide that is core to a real business. Transfer This Call. It starts there and goes much deeper.

That’s why VoIP, FMC and Dual Mode devices, like the Nokia E and N series (Nokia is a client) and now what appears to be coming from Apple via the SDK on the iPhone, plus the RIM Blackberry (if RIM opens up vs. being a slave to T-Mobile) to really blow the SOHO, SMB and Enterprise Market apart with Mobile VoIP. Another reason this is important is no Telco has more to lose than AT&T if users drop their landlines and go all mobile in the USA. With over 60 percent of the USA now inside AT&T territory, and long lines that carry a lot of the traffic and a big network that they own and operate, losing calls to other carrier (there are more than just the big three -AT&T, Verizon and Sprint) is not what the reborn Ma Bell is looking to have happen. If the business market takes Om’s advice then AT&T has a more than 50 percent chance of losing the customer not only for wireless, where price and coverage are king (hence their tagline “fewest dropped calls”) as well as the network losing traffic that comes from their own customers, inbound calls to their customers, switched calls to their network and more.

In essence the big gorilla can fall the fastest and farthest if they don’t find a way to embrace the idea of FMC and Mobile VoIP to insure the big paying corporate customers don’t start going elsewhere piece by piece.