Consumer tablets can kill the office desk phone

One year ago, we took a look at CounterPath's Bria softphone customers for PCs and mobile devices. Today, CounterPath has released Bria iPad Edition 1.0, which the company believes is a perfect example of effective IT consumerization because it strikes a balance between the feature-heavy, but immobile desk phone and the versatile, but feature-light consumer smartphone-based VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol).

The deskphonelooks ill-suited for today's work style

"The deskphonelooks ill-suited for today's work style, where employees need anytime, anywhere access to voice and data --specifically the kinds of applications where a tablet shines," a CounterPath representative said today. "[However] VoIP applications for tablets have been clunky and user-unfriendly to the point that they undermine the responsiveness and productivity they're supposed to enhance."

Like Bria for iPhone and Android, the iPad Edition supports multiple accounts on any SIP compliant server, support for hosted VoIP and IP-PBX (Private -Automatic- Branch Exchange)s, multitasking support, support for bluetooth speakers and headsets, call hold, transfer, conferencing, display and history, calling over Wi-Fi, 3G, or 4G, and native support for all of CounterPath's other desktop and mobile VoIP solutions. The main advantage of iPad is its larger screen, so the app takes advantage of this with a new multi-pane UI that includes a pop-over dialpad.

The truth kill the desktop phone?

Does any of this to tell the truth "kill" the desktop phone? Not but, clearly. Nevertheless CounterPath said the first update to the software later this year will add video calls, SMS, Instant Messaging and presence; and the more features applicable to an enterprise setting it has, the better chance it has at adoption.

Besides, cloud computing company ModelMetrics and Dimensional Innovation released results of a survey in May that said only about 22% of businesses in the survey had officially deployed tablets, nevertheless 72% have iPads and other tablets being used on an individual basis.

The introduction of PCs into the enterprise IT arena

"We should recall that the introduction of PCs into the enterprise IT arena was driven by business units that purchased the equipment and felt they gained the capability to leverage innovation more quickly, however also gained independence from the chains of corporate IT," said Sam Gross, Vice President of Global IT Outsourcing Solutions at Unisys. "This bottom-up trend, whether it was endorsed or not by the CIO, overtook enterprise computing in the corporate workplace."

I think these guys are right on with this. I know Apple didn't want to cannibalize sales of it's own products at that time, however they should have incorporated iPhone research right into the iPad from the very start. Had they been smart enough to do that, you would see millions of more sales of the iPad to the business market than what you have today. Once Apple when all is said and done makes the iPad a cell phone too, offerings like CounterPath's are going to make it adjacent to impossible for companies not to adopt this type of tablet research, for any business that wants to have a competitive edge. The IP desk phone's days are evidently numbered. Unless Cisco and Polycomm have some kind of an iPad killer in the works ready to go, you are going to see Apple intrude furthermore and furthermore into their market space...and at an ever increasing rate it would appear. What Apple knows now is that all else being equal, the most flexible, versatile, adaptable platform for the most part wins. If they had understood that 30 years ago, think how different the world might be today?

I love this stuff. Every new device will kill every old device - laptop, netbook, smartphone, tablet, any Apple gizmo, whatever. The most illogical combination gets the most notice.

There are already Android powered tablet phones out there, so this isn't in effect all that much of a stretch.The office phone is probably one of the most used, least improved devices on the planet. Being able to access all of the functionality of these things with a modern UI would be a god send. Imagine an administrative assistant being able to sync with the companies directory, print out cell-lists, directions...Hell, even transfers and conferencing would be much easier to accomplish.

Reports of fraudulent charges have now gone worldwide, and it appears that the issue may be related to Apple's in-app purchasing mechanism.

The reports are on the whole flooding in over iTunes users finding their credit balances drained by hackers. Why hasn't Apple said a thing to assure clients it has things in accordance with control?

Even even though Windows Phone has been leading the research curve for the straightway generation of all of Microsoft's graphical interfaces --everything from Windows 8 to Xbox Live is expected to adopt the mobile OS' "live tile" system-- Windows Phone seemed to have been lost in the shuffle in Microsoft's E3 keynote yesterday.

Laughably monikered upgrade to MobileMe called iCloud

Apple is bringing us a laughably monikered upgrade to MobileMe called iCloud, and when you strip away the hype and Steve Jobs reality distortion field, iCloud is a proprietary, convoluted and highly restrictive sync-backup service, says Betanews reader Mark Freedman.

The Google Maps team on Wednesday announced an update to both Google Maps for Android 1.6+ and Google Maps for desktop that incorporates real-time mass transit data, letting users not only plot their bus and train routes, however also track them in real time.

The more popular

The more popular and sophisticated a smartphone becomes, the more susceptible it is to malware, fraud and other personal attacks. Android is no exception, and two respected security vendors have dipped their toes in the market with two new betas offering protection for Android-based devices.