As much as it was expected, it is still incredibly exciting to watch the announcement of the new iPhone 4, especially as it brings two incredibly important milestones for video – video calling and HD video recording on the iPhone.
The question remains will the ability to do face-to-face video calling on the iPhone make it mainstream?
The answer I think lies in what consumers point to the greatest barriers of video calling becoming as truly mainstream as a phone call – those barriers being quality, ease of use, ubiquity or accessibility.
To date, image quality of video calling has been unreliable, many mainstream consumers find most free services too complex to use, and probably the greatest barrier is that video calling has been mainly accessed via PC to PC communications, or on the business side, costly meeting room to meeting room implementations.
Our vision is that video calling will indeed become as mainstream and seamless as a phone call and to get it there, we will deliver on the promise of bringing HD video to anyone – consumers and businesses – anywhere, on any screen.
In April, I announced that we’ll bring HD video calling to the PC, and told Peter Burrows at BusinessWeek we will introduce a mobile version of Vid by the end of the year. Then last month at Google I/O, we announced that we’ll be bringing HD video calling to the TV this fall.
We applaud Apple on the news today as this is a critical step in video communications. We are also excited about the interoperability potential of Apple’s Facetime app since it is based on open standards (SIP and H264). SightSpeed – the network that powers Logitech Vid – is also SIP based. We firmly believe in supporting open ecosystems that enable interoperability, as this is the only way video communications can become truly ubiquitous in both the consumer and enterprise markets.
It seems that 2010 is turning out to be the most important year for video calling… by knocking down key barriers – not only will Logitech make HD video calling a reality, but we’ll soon enable seamless video communication between the PC, TV, and smartphone.
Video calling for mobiles is present for the last 4 months for all symbian 9.4 users. (eg nokia 5800 using 3g or Wifi) via fring (www.fring.com)
Video calling will be very easy with I-phone 4 also 3g will works at its best. these is the most important feature of apple iphone4.
Lets hope that VID for smartphones will be available also for Nokia Smartphones as a lot of people own phones Symbian 9.4 enabled!
Why does VID will not support WM 6.x and greater ? The hardware on this devices is ready for this feature since years ! And there are x millions of people using this OS in buz and private.
I don’t think video calling will make it mainstream. When I call them, I don’t need to see their face, just their voice in order to talk to them. However, it’s still a nice feature to have, and it may come in handy from time to time. but other than that, I doubt it’ll go mainstream and people will end up using it as frequent as regular calling.
I really don’t know, what all the fuss is about the “new” video-calling on the iPhone 4. It only works over WiFi, which is a pitty, and was introduced over 3G in Austria/Europe 5 years ago by Hutchinson 3. It never got a killer-app. No one uses it. No one!
YES IT WILL ,TRUST ME ; THAT WILL BE THE NEXT TEXHNICAL INVENTION; CAUSE, WHAT EVER MAN CAN CONCIEVE AND BELIEV E; HE CAN ACHIEVE; THAT’S HOW HE GOT OUT OF THE DARK AGES; SOMEONE HAD TO HAVE THAT EPIPHANI TO AHCIEVE MORE THAN WHAT WAS GOING ON AT THE TIME THAT’S ALSO HOW WE GOT TO THE MOON; ANYONE CAN CONCIEVE AN IDEA; IT IS SOMEONE ELSE WHO CAN FIGURE OUT A WAY TO GET THERE!, OR GET ‘ER DONE