Hacker News Reader

Comment by byoung2 | Hacker News Reader

FaceTime is an open protocol

It may be open, but that doesn't guarantee adoption...to date, only the iPhone 4 makes use of it, whereas Fring and Qik already operate on multiple platforms. If Facetime does manage to catch on and other manufacturers adopt it, then the iPhone loses that competitive advantage, since there will be plenty of Android, Symbian, and Windows phones that use it. The other OSes have the advantage of being able to use other standards as well (because Apple will not allow an app that competes with Facetime in its app store).

View on HN

In the next, say, 3 months, will the number of Fring or Qik users be even close to the number of iPhone 4 users?

Fring allows video calls with skype who's users surely will outnumber those of the iphone.

Skype has around 50 million active users. 5-10 million iPhones sell per quarter. Shouldn't take long to catch up.

YUP the same way more people use BBM for IM than Google Chat. (Oh they dont!!) And there are more Black berries than IPhones

Where are you getting that number for Skype from? In October, 2009, they had 521 million registered users, and 40 million registered users in the preceeding 3 months: http://techcrunch.com/2009/10/21/skype-hits-521-million-user... That would indicate to me they likely have more than 50 million active users.

Additionally, when someone buys an iPhone, they are not going to use that phone for the rest of their life. People who already have iPhones will buy new models. Others will migrate from iPhone to other phones. So just based on the number of phones sold, you can't tell when it will "catch up".

Furthermore, as Skype runs on the iPhone (over 3G as well now), iPhone users can also be Skype users.

I got it based on the number of active users, not registered users. Everyone who has registered for Skype ever counts as a registered user. I got my numbers here:

http://aaytch.com/borderless

You're right that you can't tell when the iPhone will catch up purely based on those numbers. I'd say it's a smart bet, though, that it won't be long. We know that Apple has already sold a few million iPhone 4s, and I'll bet that it sells somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 million before the next iPhone comes out.

You're also right that you can Skype on the iPhone. We don't yet know how good Skype video chat will be on the iPhone, how it will compare to FaceTime, or how many people will use it instead of FaceTime. We also don't know who else (if anyone) will use the FaceTime protocol.

However, we do know that every iPhone 4 comes with FaceTime enabled, that it is trivial to use, and that it is integrated in the phone and contacts at the system level. All of this softens the significance of Skype's apparent head start.

" If Facetime does manage to catch on and other manufacturers adopt it, then the iPhone loses that competitive advantage"

On the other hand, it makes FaceTime more useful, because you'll be able to call more people with your iPhone. Most likely the "advantage" will come down to who has the best implementation, and who has clunky implementations.

Food for thought: what do you think would happen if Apple opened up the app store to all devices (assuming there were a way to run these apps on Android, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, etc). Don't you think a significant number would jump ship to other phones (e.g. ones with replaceable batteries, slide out keyboards, removable memory cards)? It would be more beneficial to the other companies than to Apple in the sense that Android users, for example, would be able to choose from the Android Marketplace and the Apple app store.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com