August 16, 2006
Show Me The Money... In VoIP
Om Malik wrote a great speculative piece at GigaOm on who'll make money in VoIP. (There's even a poll question, if you want to put in your two cents worth.) As Om says, with Wi-Fi, any profits made were made mostly by hardware makers (e.g. Linksys, D-Link, Netgear etc.) and chip makers.
It makes sense then that something similar may happen with VoIP, espcially considering how many free services there are. As proof of at least a similar attempt, look at who is offering VoIP hardware and phones. Linksys, Netgear, D-Link, and others, of course.
While some of the offerings are a bit pricey - normal for new consumer gadgets - I would assume their collective market research teams did enough homework to determine that someone would actually, given the number of products released.
It all supports my own hypothesis so far that people don't want to pay for intangibles such as soft VoIP, but are more than happy to spend $200-300 on a Skype Wi-Fi phone.
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