To the board, an interesting note from the competition!
Natural Microsystems Rides Rising Tide For IP Telephony
(11/13/97; 6:45 p.m. EST)
By Mo Krochmal, TechWeb
<Picture>If you have any doubts about the growth of Internet telephony, just ask Natural Microsystems.
The Framingham, Mass.-based company, which supplies digital-signal processing boards and software tools that customers use as voice and data gateways to their networks, went from zero revenues from Net telephony components in 1996 to $75 million this year -- 25 percent of the company's income.
"1997 is a watershed year for IP telephony," said Patrick Fetterman, market segment manager for IP Telephony at Natural Microsystems.
In two years, IP telephony has risen from almost no users in 1995 to 2 million consumer users and 2 million business users today, according to data from International Data Corp., which estimates 6 million business users and 4 million consumer users next year.
IP telephony is not just about using your computer to call your mother in England for free, avoiding the long-distance charges, Fetterman said. It is about converting voice to data and sending the packets out and then reassembling them, in real time.
To the user with a telephone, it is a conversation over the Net without annoying lags or dropouts. To the vendor who wants to sell through its Website, it's about customers being able to click on a button that says "Call Us" and talk to a human being while looking at the site -- on one telephone line.
"The toll by-pass application is what everyone is talking about," said Fetterman, referring to free conversations over the Internet." But that is a short-term solution. It may not be important if long-distance carriers drop their rates. "The long-term solution happens when networks treat everything like data. That will make a fundamental change in how we communicate."
The $75 million revenue figure seems high for this little company comming from VoIP. This sounds like hype, but will require some looking into on my part... I like the IDC estimates and DLGC should maintain market share leadership based on the OEM agreements with major equipment providers.
Jay |
