It's official: Mobile Video Calls is the next big thing: Skype vs Facetime

A couple of weeks ago we suggested that Google is going to shift the video communications market (and win Skype), betting on mobile video calls. Today we can accurately say that very soon mobile video chat will become a huge market and the IT giants will fight for it. It's enough to watch the Facetime (iPhone 4 video chat) presentation to understand this. Since June 24 Apple will start selling iPhone 4 with the front camera and video over Wi-Fi in US, and it's obvious that to the and of this year millions of users will make video calls via the iPhone, and Apple will become the world's largest mobile video chat provider. But it will be only the short term win. Then Skype, Google and other players will join the fight.

A few days after Google acquired the Android video chat engine GIPS, the small but very fast-growing company Fring has released the first video chat for Android-smartphones. Prior to that Fring supported mobile video calls on Symbian S60 and iPhone (but only one-side due to lack of front camera). A day later the US operator Sprint 4G released the Android-communicator HTC EVO 4G, which provides free video chat Qik.

A week later Skype added video calls to its Nokia N900 client. In addition, Skype announced that this year video chat will also appear in its Android app. Potentially, realizing an opportunity to call from the desktop to any mobile device and back, Skype could win the new market. In addition, Skype has already begun to explore another related field - video calls via TV.



According to GigaOM report, by 2015 the number of video calls will increase by almost 10 times (up to 30 billion per year). And every third video call will be over mobile device, and every tenth - over TV.

See also: Top 10 VoIP services