In an Infoworld article by Stephen Lawson, IDG News Service writes about the VoIP capabilities of Windows CE. Microsoft is including VoIP in all of its platforms, most visibly, though, in this Windows CE release.
This is a quote form the Microsoft website:
"VoIP Devices: Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is a rapidly emerging technology for voice communication that uses the ubiquity of IP-based networks to deploy VoIP-enabled devices in enterprise and home environments. VoIP-enabled devices, such as desktop and mobile IP phones and gateways, decrease the cost of voice and data communication, enhance existing features, and add compelling new telephony services. Windows CE .NET 4.2 is a robust, real-time operating system that delivers a flexible, integrated platform for developing, marketing, and using a variety of VoIP-enabled client devices."
In fact, on the Microsoft site, they explain the value proposition for driving the substitution of traditional public switched telephone networks (PSTNs) and cellular networks.
"VoIP Industry Trends The overall United States telecommunications industry, including equipment and services, generated more than $600 billion in revenue in 2000.1 While VoIP is currently a small fraction of this, it is growing quickly. In North America, wholesale VoIP sales were estimated to approach well over $400 million in 2002.2 Total equipment purchases of VoIP gateways, soft switches such as IP Private Branch Exchange (IP PBX), and VoIP application servers are expected to reach almost $12 billion by 2006, a six-fold increase over 2001.3 Similarly, the revenue from selling wired enterprise IP phones may be in excess of $2.7 billion by 2006; this figure does not include mobile IP phones or phones used in private homes."
IMHO, Microsoft is poised to take over this market and actively drive substitution. You can bet that all the new versions of the OS will have VoIP as an integral component. It makes good business sense and they have all the infrastructure components in place to provide a compelling argument for a massive shift to VoIP.
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