Of the 6100 exhibitors at CeBIT this year in Hannover, Germany I spoke with 8 or 10 companies working on dual-mode wifi/cellular phones. Kyocera engineers took part in the VoIP Vendor Summit at CeBIT, but did not have a booth.
The biggest technical hurdle for high-volume wifi phone deployment is still the chipset/DSP/wifi-radio integration. It is an ongoing development at the moment which will solve the power consumption issues and bring MPEG processing on board.
With these improvements, the dual-mode wifi phone will offer more robust features, but with a price. The standard wifi-only handset is still hovering around US$200, however several manufacturers at CeBIT were promoting a $150 phone with very nice firmware. The camera option added about $100, and provided very nice SIP/Video calling.
The coolest product launched at CeBIT(aside from the $20 cigarette lighter MP3 players) was the WiFi SIP/Video Phone. It is a full-featured open standards IP/PBX desk phone with integrated camera and 7-inch touch-sensitive flat panel display.
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Of the 6100 exhibitors at CeBIT this year in Hannover, Germany I spoke with 8 or 10 companies working on dual-mode wifi/cellular phones. Kyocera engineers took part in the VoIP Vendor Summit at CeBIT, but did not have a booth.
The biggest technical hurdle for high-volume wifi phone deployment is still the chipset/DSP/wifi-radio integration. It is an ongoing development at the moment which will solve the power consumption issues and bring MPEG processing on board.
With these improvements, the dual-mode wifi phone will offer more robust features, but with a price. The standard wifi-only handset is still hovering around US$200, however several manufacturers at CeBIT were promoting a $150 phone with very nice firmware. The camera option added about $100, and provided very nice SIP/Video calling.
The coolest product launched at CeBIT(aside from the $20 cigarette lighter MP3 players) was the WiFi SIP/Video Phone. It is a full-featured open standards IP/PBX desk phone with integrated camera and 7-inch touch-sensitive flat panel display.
-- Mirian