“Not every new feature of the iPhone is a major shift, many are just refinements of what have come before,” Matthew Panzarino writes for TNW. “But some few definitely are and I think that the iPhone is poised to gain another hugely disruptive feature: high definition audio.”
“One of the most disruptive additions to iOS was iMessage, a cross-device messaging service that integrates seamlessly with the standard Messages app on iPhones, iPods and iPads. iMessage has insane potential to upset the balance of power when it comes to text messaging and the carriers know it,” Panzarino writes. “Because iMessage is mostly seamless, users of iOS 5 have begun sending thousands of text messages completely for free, and many of them don’t even know it.”
“If Apple were to introduce high definition audio streaming (something along the lines of Skype’s SILK technology, but perhaps built with ALAC) to all iDevices, it could bring down the hammer on carrier plans overnight,” Panzarino writes. “Imagine firing up the Phone.app from your device’s springboard and making a call. If your phone detects that the other device is running iOS, then it automatically switches seamlessly to an HD audio call using your data connection and not your minutes. Lets call it VoiceTime.”
Panzarino writes, “This kind of system would allow Apple to deliver insanely crisp audio calls, something that almost no other smartphone does, especially on AT&T. At the same time, it would sidestep the carrier’s voice plans almost entirely in a clever passive-aggressive way, much like iMessage did.”
Much more in the full article here.
duh.
Matt’s next profound observation: women have vaginas.
They lost me when they said to use ALAC lossless compression. Anyone who knows anything about VoIP knows that you need very compressed data. Skypes Silk is a much broader range but it also is compressed like crazy.
Nice pipe dream, but unlikely, at least how TNW explained it
Plus one…
awesome. so then my data plan can get more limited, and more expensive.
That’s one way that the wireless companies will adjust.
Face it, whatever Apple comes up with the wireless companies will just adjust their rates structure.
Plus for it to be truly disruptive pretty much everyone would have to have an iPhone.
For anything to be disruptive, apple will need to become an ISP
Succinctly said and very true. Sadly it is unlikely to happen. Even their millions saved is not enough.
“Pipe Dream”……iCal’ed.
If I had a dollar for all the times Seth has been……..
apple works with carriers who have to certify every iOS release before apple can release it.
this is good for carriers as well since they will save a lot of money not having to run their billing systems to handle the ancient voice calling billing.
the carriers are going to make money on data overages
Free calls to other iPhone users… AT&T already gives me free mobile to mobile calling with users of any mobile phone and carrier. I don’t see this disrupting anything, just lightening the load on the carriers.
uh its about texting you dumbass, you’re charged $20 a month for that.
12 x 20 x 2 year contract, crunch the numbers, genius…for a data plan you’re already paying for.
First off this article is not about texting, Dumbass. It is about using Audio similarly to how iMessage works. As for the texting and what I pay for it, I am keeping my unlimited texting anyways because many of my friends do not have iPhones. So I would still be using my texting plan. My point was that with my unlimited texting plan they also give me unlimited mobile to mobile across all carriers, so this really isn’t going to have that big of an effect on the carriers.
Hopefully you explained it simple enough for the fanboys to understand. I guess they forget that not everyone uses an iPhone.
If you don’t have an iPhone, then you don’t have iMessage, or FaceTime, or VoiceTime, or SIRI….and on and on…
Yep! If you don’t have an iPhone, you don’t have an iPhone.
its about texting, iMessage IS texting, whether audio or traditional typing.
Audio texting?
True, and especially in the US, iMessage will be more disruptive because US carriers also charge for SMS texting on the receiver’s end !!! What a rip-off !!!
BTW, no name calling, please. This is a Mac-centric site, no need for aggression here.
Foist !!
F_%K! yeah!!!
this was Apple’s plan all along since 1st iPhone mid 2007.
not only to disrupt the SmartPhone manufacturers that were actually DumbAssPhones but the carriers that abused users with fees & limiting features.
iPhone disruption II:
Messages from iOS5: bypassing carrier’s most lucrative business: total overcharge for sms or texting or messaging–whatever you wish to call it.
iPhone disruption III:
iPhone’s iOS5’s next move: bypass carrier’s exuberant phone call fees through Apple’s own Skype-like calling!
now that Apple needs not carriers for calls or sms, who needs these bandits?!
no one can match Apple for bypassing everyone:
1. the iCloud datacenter is just too massive
2. no one can do hardware/software integration as well as Apple or own a system as thought-through as Messages + HD calls!
3. no one has both soft & hardware at their disposal, without 3rd party chaos & expenses
4. no one has Apple’s cash to compete, nor are any debt-free as Apple
Steve Jobs disrupted 7 industries.
now he’s hopefully bringing the corporate telecoms to their knees. let them beg for mercy for screwing with clients so much for so long!
as always:
people or companies ONLY change, when the milk is spilled, when they are forced to give more to clients or they can’t compete and will rot in hell. who cares if none are left. they should never have messed with democracy or fairness to clients! after all, they exist thanks to us paying them. their lack of respect deserves this situation. Apple deserves to win and sue the hell out of anyone who steals their mojo & R&D. so be it.
a toast to the most democratic, liberating, conglomerate that still is so down to earth, so fair, so caring to its customers, they think as agile as their wild cat OS, as flexibly & creatively as a SmallBiz, bypassing stupid laws, rules, technological limits, always pushing mankind forward, just like Silicon Pirates! bravo! encore!!
for those naysayers, who cares what you think. go ahead. pay your carriers more – you obviously can afford to waste money, and energy and your mind. the rest of us prefer trued simplicity, functional devices, total integration, peace, time etc. we don’t need hardware specs, we need simple, stable solutions. to each his own.
And who is going to carry all this data if not the carriers? IS Apple going to “rent” towers and air time from them for us? Or are we just going to wish it so?
I love Apple’s products, always have (as in started using the Mac in 1987 and never owned a DOS/Windows box). But the plain truth is they aren’t going to create a whole new cellular network from scratch. And how do you propose to allow us to communicate with those that, for what ever reason, don’t have an iOS devise?
We will all have to rely on the carriers to get our data packets to and from each other to some extent.
You’re forgetting one extremely important fact, for Apple to be as disruptive as you’d like to think they could be most everyone would have to have an iPhone. Most people don’t have iPhones so even those that do will still have to carry texting plans and voice plans in order to communicate with the non-iphone user.
What this actually does is make the iPhone user use more and more data.
How many hundreds of millions of ios devices are there. iPod touch , iPad and iPhone ?
Glass raised in air to toast with you.
FYI
Bria, the iPad soft phone app recently added SILK as an audio codec.
This is a non-idea. For vast majority of mobile phone users around the world, voice minutes are NOT the problem; data limits and constraints are. When was the last time anyone here went over their voice minutes in a single month???
One major problem with this solution is latency. Just like with Skype, iChat and any other IP-based communications, the delays will make this very problematic. IP network is not built for robust, consistent and reliable real-time streaming data communication. Especially with mobile networks, which have very inconsistent data rates.
For many months, I had tried using SIP-based VoIP on an android phone. For the uninformed, it is a protocol that allows user to have an app on their device that will let them call ordinary phones using data network. In conjunction with Google Voice phone number, I had it working, both incoming and outgoing. While my phone was on a WiFi network, calls were clear and quality was consistent with practically zero latency. As soon as I went onto 3G connection, it was pretty much useless; any call longer than 15 seconds was guaranteed to be interrupted by drop-outs, and it was clear that it took up to 3 seconds for my data to arrive at the destination. It felt like talking to Apollo astronauts on the moon.
Voice over IP on mobile networks is a great idea that just won’t work in today’s reality.
All they have to do is add a switch to Voice button within FaceTime. I really wonder what is stopping them from doing it already. Sucks to have to download Skype to do a Voice call to my sister while she is traveling in Spain without her paying roaming charges.
Bingo
Was going to post exactly the same thing.
to all those who argue that it’s NOT disruptive.
you are right.
not for now!
as you say, the VoIP technology on this planet is not ripe yet. it’s already overloaded and Skype calls or Vonage or Viber suck with bad quality, delays, drops.
but all your arguments are flawed:
1. this article on Apple’s Next Voice Disruption is not official. it’s speculation. Apple did not announce this.
2. Apple is most probably planning this. we just don’t know when. but they are somewhat restricted by the carrier load limits.
3. when this does come out, Apple will be at the forefront, and once more all others will copy it. carriers limit themselves too, as before iPhone 07 no one pushed the limits for downloading, web, movies, apps etc.
it will come. sooner than you think.
4. Viber/Skype works much smoother outside the US. we always judge the entire world by our standards. just because we were #1 world power means nothing nowadays. the EU & Japan & Arab Peninsula have been ahead of us for decades, esp. in cellular tech. they do not have dropped call problems like in Verizon’s stupid can-you-hear-me-now ads which for them just means our systems do not work! so Apple’s disruption here might work abroad.
People keep talking about iMessage being so disruptive to the carriers’ text messaging charging plans. However, most people have unlimited texting or some plan which they never exceed, so it’s not like the carriers are getting paid per text message these days (I’m sure some people still do pay per message, but they won’t text enough to make a difference).
What we’re seeing here is the shift from any voice transmissions to everything being purely data. The carriers have been planning for this all along by ending unlimited data plans and preparing high speed data networks.
Notice they haven’t been investing in improved voice technology? Because the money in the future (for carriers) is in the transmission of DATA, not voice. Any voice transmissions are just going to be tagalongs to data.
I think a better improvement would be peer to peer smart app updating. If an app update is available and there appears to be enough users locally with the updated app, it would be transferred in the background from their iDevices instead of using cellular data or wifi. It would be smart enough to make multiple connections and figure out if the transfer could be accomplished in 5 minutes or less depending on the distance and number of fellow iDevice users within range and would have a resume feature.
Over Wifi, that would be great (except for the ALAC part). OVer the cell network, that’s the dumbest idea ever.
With Bluetooth 4.0’s ability to utilize Wifi to communicate, it would make sense to have peer to peer bonjour based Voip for corporate contacts or close proximity friends so as not to utilize cellular for calls and messaging. Find your friends could be extended to remember locations (wifi wise) to know which contacts can be communicated via wifi/bluetooth instead of cellular data.
Last post.
There are already apps that allow phone calls over WiFi, without using the carriers connection at all. If you are using the carrier’s bandwidth to make a phone call, I don’t think it really matters too much if it’s a “voice” call or one that uses “data.” You’ll just end up with higher cost for data.
What would be great is if the built-in phone app let me seamlessly use the WiFi connection, when it’s available, to make (and receive) calls with the same phone number. So, bypass the carrier automatically, when possible. But obviously, AT&T and the rest of the carriers will not make something like that possible.
This what Viber does..Crystal clear phone calls all over the world-works on 3g and uses 240Kb/minute
my data plan is 6GB/month
That’s a lot of calling