The future of voice is "applications"

With us moving away from single-purpose 12-keypad mobile phones to more touch-centric Internet devices, the “voice” has been reduced to being an app. Sure, today phone companies run that app and use traditional phone research, however in the future all voice communication could be from apps using Internet technologies.

On Wednesday, Juniper Innovation of the U.K. released a report that shows that by 2016 near four-fifths of 640 million mobile VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) users will be making calls through apps downloaded on their smartphones, during rest of the calls could be over phone company networks. Even today companies just as Nimbuzz and Skype are enjoying tremendous success on smartphones, a trend I have written about many times.

Juniper forecasts that the number of mobile video callers will jump to 130 million by 2016, thanks to the introduction of mobile video calling services from most major companies and improvements in video calling research.

Then we should expect to see contextual identities supported by apps that help you keep track. Business identities can fragment for consultants and entrepreneurs. Personal can fragment for any number of reasons.

The start of this with dating apps

We’re seeing the start of this with dating apps, and virtual PBX (Private -Automatic- Branch Exchange) apps for business. Then and there, LinkedIn with CRM-like features to help you take calls from interviewers or candidates.