CounterPath thinks its softphone software development kit (SDK) is better than WebRTC, a recent strategic partnership highlights the growing cloud of CounterPath technology.
Late last year CounterPath released an SDK that helps operators, solutions vendors and enterprise firms hasten the rollout of SIP-based softphone apps for iOS and Android mobile platforms as well as Windows and Mac computer environments. The company has said that the SDK provides more options for telecos than WebRTC, the unified communications technology gaining support that lets any modern browser seamlessly run UC.
Now the company has announced a strategic partnership with a major supplier of networking equipment and solutions to market and sell CounterPath’s over-the-top (OTT) communications solutions to operators worldwide.
Enterprise and operator OTT solutions are important for customers that want to differentiate their UC and IP Multimedia Subsystem based deployments. It helps operators fend off OTT services such as Skype and Apple’s Facetime in that it helps operators deliver their own branded OTT services.
In the case of Rogers One Number, for instance, the operator has experienced a positive upturn in subscriber growth and reduced usage of OTT services from third parties, according to CounterPath.
“Carriers and Enterprises are looking for market tested Unified Communications solutions that they can confidently roll out to their end users," said Donovan Jones in a statement by the company, president and CEO of CounterPath.
"By taking our client-centric, platform agnostic approach and extending it to our server platform we can offer a solution which not only overlays to any network deployment but greatly enhances the user experience, providing a highly differentiated service for operators and enterprises,” he added. “This new relationship opens up a significant market opportunity for CounterPath, once again demonstrating the industry's trust in the value and reliability of our applications and solutions."
The WebRTC industry is not going away any time soon, however, even if CounterPath has comparable solutions. There are expected to be 4.7 billion mobile WebRTC enabled clients by 2018, according to recent ABI Research predictions. This is in addition to the roughly 1.5 billion PCs that should support WebRTC by 2016.
Once WebRTC is supported by the majority of web browsers, a process well underway based on the above statistics, the benefits of having a common foundation from which UC can be embedded in any app or web page will catapult both the use and reliance on WebRTC.
Clearly, WebRTC is here to stay. But moves made by CounterPath and others show that until WebRTC reaches maturity, there will be no lack of options for operators looking to integrate UC into their offerings today.
Edited by
Stefania Viscusi
