Google and a variety of other important tech companies, like Alcatel-Lucent, Dialogic, Ericsson, GENBAND, Genesys and others, are pretty excited about WebRTC. But not everybody has jumped on the WebRTC bandwagon. Notably absent from the parade are Apple and Microsoft.
Software engineering services company Daitan Group has access to many of the most important companies in communications. That’s because its client list includes large carriers, over-the-top providers, social media companies, and anybody that needs help with big data projects. And Graham Holt, vice president of sales solutions and engineering at Daitan Group, said that everyone in videoconferencing wants to bridge over to WebRTC.
However, the market challenge in videoconferencing is that WebRTC is not available to the average person today because it’s not supported by all browsers, said Holt, who met with Webrtcworld this week at the WebRTC Conference & Expo in Atlanta.
Of course, many of those in the Web community believe now that Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox support WebRTC, Apple and Microsoft may eventually follow suit with Safari and Internet Explorer.
“The big issue with Microsoft and Apple is that, if they did nothing, it would be better than if they did something completely different,” Ian Small, CEO of TokBox said, adding that with Firefox coming on today, the clock starts ticking on these other companies.
Rich Tehrani, CEO of TMC, which puts on the WebRTC event in partnership with Phil Edholm and Crossfire Media, then asked Small and other experts on a panel at the Atlanta event today whether Microsoft’s recent move to buy Skype may make it less likely to embrace WebRTC.
“Skype’s value is not their endpoint, it’s the service, so why would WebRTC be anything but a good thing for them?” asked Jan Linden, senior product manager for Google.
Small seemed to agree, pointing out that Skype has a network and has users on the service that network enables, and getting the users is the hard part.
“WebRTC is just a transport, and I think they’ll get there in time,” Small said of Skype and Microsoft.
Edited by
Alisen Downey
