A valuation of $50mil for ZIPT with 50 mill customers has been benchmarked;
http://appcrawlr.com/app/search?go=go&q=crystal clear voice&device=android
fring works on 2G GPRS, EDGE
fring with 50million customers was sold for $50 million sept 2013
It is going to be sold to carriers to beat OTT voip apps, because Genband believes carriers provide a better service, because carriers control the OTT infrastructure and the carrier infrastructure
fring is a mobile communication service that enables free mobile Group Video calls, video calls, voice calls and live chat.
fring is available on all major Smartphones (including iPhone/ iPod touch, Android and Nokia), on any mobile operator, and any mobile internet connection (3G/4G, WiFi, GPRS, EDGE). fring has a real time contact availability feature which allows you to see who is online before you call them.
fring was the 1st to bring mobile VoIP, Video and Group Video over IP. fring adds more than a million new Smartphone users every month.
- See more at:
http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/fring#sthash.ZnYOPKqM.dpuffring
http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/12/fr...-genband-to-build-out-whatsapps-for-carriers/
Fring, an early startup that focused on creating group messaging and video calling apps for mobile phones, competing against the likes of Skype and WhatsApp, is calling it a day as an independent entity: it has been
sold to
Genband, a provider of services like IP gateways and billing and other services to mobile, fixed and cable carriers.
Terms of the deal have not been officially disclosed, but we have heard from a source that the price was $50 million — a number reported also by
Reuters. That represents a poor return for Israel-based Fring, which had
raised around $30 million from investors including Pitango, North Bridge and Veritas. Texas-based Genband, meanwhile, had
raised a huge $343 million round of funding from One Equity Partners, Sevin Rosen Funds, and Venrock in January of this year; this is its first acquisition since news of that raise broke.
So why the sale? Although Fring was one of the very first companies to offer OTT messaging and video services, it was quickly overtaken by newer competitors. Fring today has 50 million users using 150 million voice minutes and 10 million video minutes each month, CEO Roy Timor-Rousso tells me, but that’s actually fairly small compared to companies like WhatsApp and Skype (both with around 300 million+ users) and Viber (200 million users).
The news highlights what could end up being a wave of consolidation in the mobile VoIP space, Timor-Rousso says.
“I think that free mobile VoIP a very crowded space. There are a lot of services with very little differentiation among them and the technology barrier is very low, so I wouldn’t be surprised if other players in our industry will have to consolidate or find other models to operate and grow into the future. As one of the leading brands in the space, Fring took a hard look and made an active strategic decision when we did the market analysis.”
http://www.nojitter.com/post/240161321/genband-fring-acquisition-and-multimedia-web-strategy
"Our game isn’t to go out and try to beat Skype by trying to have more fring clients out there," he said. "It’s really to sell to the carriers."
Walsh pointed out that "an enormous amount of international traffic is shifting to over-the-top." He cited TeleGeography figures showing growth of international minutes from 275 billion to 500 billion between 2005 and 2012--with 150 billion of those minutes coming from OTT: "They're almost all of the growth," he said.
Walsh insists that carriers can beat competing OTT services with their own offerings because they control not only the OTT infrastructure, but also the carrier infrastructure, and so can provide a better experience. He said fring was one of the few OTT providers, along with Skype and WhatsApp, with the proven ability to scale and the broad feature/function set required for a major carrier offering.
He also said a carrier-based OTT offering can be more appealing because it offers something that standalone OTT services can't--ubiquity: "What's the fundamental weakness of an OTT offering?" he said. "It’s not ubiquitous. It's a community. Who connects communities? It's the carriers." He noted that Skype's fastest-growing type of traffic is off-net--i.e., originating on Skype and terminating on the public network.
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