It’s been reported that the next iPhone will sport a front-facing camera in order to support video calling (which would be perfect for Skype which I have blogged about previously). The question then is whether or not it will be a worthwhile feature or if it will fall by the wayside.
Most of us will know that the potential fourth generation iPhone would not be the first phone to support video calling. Those of us who saw the launch of 3G services would have remembered 3 Mobile being the first in Australia to launch 3G video calling. As other networks launched their 3G networks, a flood of video capable handsets were released into the market.
I can honestly say, I have never used mobile video calling despite having one video capable mobile (which was an iMate JasJar for those who are interested). That was primarily influenced by the rate plans of the day which tolled video calling quite highly as well as the relatively low quality of the video.
These days, 3G networks are faster with more backhaul and services like Skype have gone some way to introducing video calling to the masses for free. Mobile rate plans are more generous these days compared to three or four years ago (at least in my opinion) and video calling is included in a lot of the cap plans out in the market.
So will video calling on the iPhone be another killer feature for Apple?
Personally, I think it could go either way. Certainly outside the context of 3G, if Apple rolled out iChat over Wi-Fi it could be a winner and would give Skype a run for its money. As for 3G video calling, it was ahead of its time a few years ago but perhaps things have changed enough to allow it to move into the mainstream. I don’t know how comfortable people are with sending video over MMS (which is effectively a disjointed way to share video communications) but it will be interesting to see how moving video into real-time will pan out.
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