Vopium reviving some interest in mobile VoIP
Voipum, a three year old mobile VoIP startup, has recently geared up its reach. There have been the iPhone and Blackberry announcements recently. And some kind of an award from Frost & Sullivan. Apparently the Vopium war has been going on since 2006 and the startup happens to be listed on Euronext (with over Euro 16m market cap).
There was a slight confusion about the Blackberry announcement. I know at least Raketu, Iotum, Eqo etc which are also VoIP clients and work on Blackberry sets. However, as Vopium clarified, it is the world's first mobile VoIP company to have an application on the Blackberry App World. Raketu, Iotum and EQO all have applications for various BlackBerry models - as does Vopium. In fact, Vopium works on more than 500 handsets.
Key to Vopium success is the LCR across various calling options including GSM call, a VoWiFi call, a pure Voice over 3G call, and (I imagine) hybrid GSM-VoIP call. According to Vopium, PSTN termination is a sustainable business model. However the company is looking to launch more value added services over the coming months. It is also exploring white label services for MVNOs. Vopium is the world's first mobile VoIP provider to offer mobile backup - a service which allows Vopium customers to store their address book contacts and calendar online.
Gartner predicts that half the mobile voice calls will be VoIP in ten years time. Obviously they have a tremendous knowledge of the mobile VoIP market. And if they turn out to be right Vopium could afford to smoke some grass too.
