« Mobile Services on Super-Hotspots | Main | Coming Changes in Broadcast Industry »
June 18, 2004
Killer apps with zero revenues
I agree completely with Clay Shirky (in the "Voice as the app killer" posting) that voice revenues
are going to decline drastically. Voice is the killer app, but that does not imply it is going to continue
generating bountiful revenues for long. It will become just another application riding on top of a
broadband connection (wireless or wireline, mostly wireless).
There will nothing unusual about this evolution. Just think about email, which is still the "killer app"
of the Internet. It comes for free with your Internet account, paid for by your subscription fee, and Yahoo and now also Google are eager to offer it to you totally for free. But nobody dares neglect
email, and attempts are made constantly to enhance it. And that is the main lesson for voice.
Service providers should not neglect opportunities to do more with it, for example by offering
higher quality voice and other associated services.
Posted by Andrew Odlyzko at June 18, 2004 09:11 PM