VoIP over Wi-Fi "moving the goalposts" for industry

Trends in the market for voice over internet protocol (VoIP) via Wi-Fi will create "winners and losers" across the industry because no one vendor possesses all the components for a voice over Wi-Fi (VoWi-Fi) solution, a new report has said.

Successful vendors will have to build effective partnerships with a number of other companies instead, the study from ABI Research said.

This VoWi-Fi partnering "ecosystem" must include close working relationships between manufacturers of private branch exchanges (PBX), fixed mobile convergence firms and handset providers.

As a result, the company said, the strength of a VoWi-Fi vendor's end product will only be as strong as the partnerships in its ecosystem.

Stan Schatt, ABI Research's vice-president and research director said vendors who sell their own internet protocol PBX and VoWi-Fi hardware could be "limited" to their own installation bases, as competitors will not help them to extend across networks.

The report says the VoWi-Fi market is forecast to grow "significantly" over the next five years. During this period, ABI Research predicts that the number of access points handling voice traffic will have a compound annual growth rate of 93 per cent, while revenue associated with VoWi-Fi access points will exceed $12 million (£6.03 million) by 2012.

ABI Research is based in Oyster Bay, New York.