"Instant" Voice Messaging, BubbleMotion & Pinger

Bubble Motion, a provider of short voice message solutions, announced last week that it had raised US$10 million in series B funding from Sequoia Capital US and India. The company plans to use the funds to increase R&D and market and deploy their product offering more globally. Bubble Motion offers a compelling voice messaging product which is similar to a "push to talk" experience. The A party simply dials the recipients number with a couple of digits preceeding the full number, dials and records a message. The B party receives a SMS with a number to dial to pick up the message. I like the concept of a voice SMS but I think the pre-dial is a bit clunky as most of us dial direct from the address book.

Pinger, funded earlier this year by Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers is currently beta testing a similar service, currently restricted to US users only. The Pinger difference is that theres no need to key in the digits that preceed the B party number - Pinger lets the A party simply speak the recipient(s) name and record the message. Message retrieval for Pinger is similar to BubbleMotion.
Both products offer the consumer a SMS type message experience but using voice. Although in the case of Pinger it sounds like the A party might have to download something (you dont need to with BubbleMotion), the B party can get the message regardless of what device they have and what network they're on.

The future of Mobile Voice & Text?

I've written previously about numerous mobile messaging services that are all targeted at taking a piece of existing mobile operators voice and messaging revenues. In Europe alone, these revenues are in excess of €250bn, and consequently this category presents a lip-licking opportunity to VC's, entrepreneurs and existing industry players

The last couple of years have seen a number product launches from the likes of Hotxt , Text2me, and Pica who are all trying to move SMS volume away from the operators monetisation mechanism (the SMSC) by allowing P2P application based messaging over a data connection. All require users to have the same application installed which presents a barrier to uptake due to the fact that not every one in a communication circle will have the same type of device – i.e. that supports J2ME. In younger age segments where users are more likely to have the latest, coolest and funkiest devices, then the chances of the communication circle having compatible devices is higher and a common messaging experience achieved.
Other apps including Mig33, Vyke, Woize, Skype, Truphone (deserves its own post) and now Nimbuzz include the mobile voice use case, providing mostly Java apps that allow you to make a call over you data connection, again avoiding the operators billing mechanism (apart from data charges) and offering non-member connection via cheap international wholesale termination rates (similar to Skype-Out).
I expect we will see a load more applications like this over the coming months, all in the same product space but with a slightly different product approach and spin. The big open question is which ones will prevail? On the current radar, Skype has the best chance of succeeding, principally due to having the financial and marketing muscle of an industry leader and an established non-mobile user base in excess of 170m. Other players that can quickly impact this space are mobile and fixed operators, who both have an existing customer relationship and billing mechanism and in the case of the mobile operators, a forced distribution channel – the device.
Another interesting aspect of this space is that the application offerings are increasing acting as integrated user experiences for what were previously silo applications (e.g. email, IM, blogging, content). Examples such as Pica, combine communication (email, chat, IM, voice messaging and text) with a range of community features (moblogging, personal profiles, emoticons and voicecast) offering users a single device destination for interacting and communicating with circles of friends and like minded users. Pica has now over 3m users, predominantly in China but raised $10m from Bluerun back in Dec 05 which could easily support localization and business dev. efforts in US and Europe.

These examples provide evidence of an increasing trend which is likely to gain traction over the coming years and IMHO presents a credible threat to operators which should be monitored. Applications like Pica give us an idea of what the future of mobile comms may look like, and serve as a valuable reminder on how fragmented today’s mobile experience is.

Read also Nimbuzz featured in MobileCrunch
12/09 - see also HelloSoft
12/09 - see also NootMobile
15/09 - see also Fring
10/10 - see also Berggi
18/10 - see also Reporo
29/11 - see GigaOM

IM to Voice

I saw this ad banner for Yahoo Messenger today that reads; "stop typing, start talking". Yahoo are promoting new voice support within their IM client (following DialPad acquisition) and it got me wondering if people will easily migrate from IM to voice? Its a different type of communication with a different associated psychology. How much substitution will happen, or how much additional traffic will be generated will be interesting to watch. Will the IM user base hurl their keyboards out the window and replace them with USB headsets - or will they compliment their heavy IM usage with the occassional phone call.
Yahoo are going to approaching this in reverse to Skype - Skype built a heavy voice usage base and complimented this with IM (I personally found that I discarded my other IM clients in favour of skype because Skype had the the most valuable contacts - probably because Im bothered to call them, rather than IM them). So then, may be we can judge the value of a relationship by the type of communication bearer we use to interact with it?

Instant Messenger for mobile phones

here - works with MSN, AOL, ICQ, jabber and Yahoo.
Lifetime license for 9.95 UKP or 1.50 UKP / month!

SMS cannibalisation??



Thanks for the link Wolfgang ;-)