Siemens calls its new product line AudioPresence(tm) HD. It integrates HD-quality, standards-based audio codecs (G.722) into the range of speakers, microsophones and aucoustic components that are embedded in its OpenStage-branded IP phones.
The same technology will be integrated in the upcoming release of OpenScape UC Version 6, which supports multi-party audio conferences and brings an “Automatic Gain Control” feature which is designed to “normalize” the annoying rises and falls in voice volume across multiple talkpaths.

As Siemen sees it, HD is best suited to support conversations “among people with diverse native language backgrounds” which they see as a fast growing market. They are backed, in this assessment, by global research firm MZA Ltd., which predicts that the worldwide conferencing solutions market will grow to nearly $8 billion at a compound growth rate of over 13%, attributing that growth to restrictions on business travel.

The announcement of HD voice coincides with the launch of its OpenStage 5 SIP phone. The company positions the OpenStage 5 SIP phone as an entry level phone that supports AudioPresenceTM HD, as well as many other key business and security features.

In April, the company raised $10 million from a group l;ed by SingTel Innov8, (SingTel Group’s corporate venture capital fund), along with Singapore’s Infocomm Investments and previous investors: Sequoia Capital, Palomar Ventures, and NGC. Total venture capital behind the firm is now approximately $40 million.

A couple of weeks ago, Opus Research reached Tom Clayton, CEO and President, to get a better understanding of the company’s growth and strategy. As we noted in this post last year, only time would tell whether Bubbly would be a the voice version or Twitter or just a Bubble. Performance, to date, points to the former. The company continues its explosive growth and has plans to continue to expand its geographic footprint. India remains its biggest market, followed by Indonesia, the Philippines and Japan.

Over time, the company has seen the share of traffic driven by “Community Blogs” (rather than from “Celebrity Posts”) grow from 10% of traffic a couple of years ago, to 45% today. The company defines this sort of communications as “friends calling friends” or “peers calling peers.” As Clayton explained, “It was key to transitioning from celebrity broadcasting to part of everyday life.” Just as it moved into voice-based initiation of text among friends, the company looks to adding photos and even video as it transforms into a mechanism for originating a tweet on Twitter or posting to Facebook.

As the company seeks to grow into North America, it expects to take an “Over The Top” (OTT) approach by developing mobile apps for iOS or Android based devices. At the same time it plans to grow beyond SMS-based message origination. It is targeting heavy Twitter users, as measured by number of followers. The company understands how to use celebrity posting as a springboard, while keeping its eye on the larger community as the real engine for traffic. Over its years of operation, it observed retrieval rates and “engagement rates” among community networks to be “four times” those for celebrity posts while, at the same time, the user population is growing twice as fast.

The mobile applications are expected to make full use of the real estate “on the glass” of today’s smartphones. Content – be it audio or text – will appear in bubbles that move dynamically on the screen. At the same time subscribers will be able to log their own comments, which appear simultaneously. Community members can choose to participate or, like many frequenters of Facebook or Twitter’s sites, they may choose to scroll through the scads of other people’s content.

BubbleTalk’s CEO, Thomas Clayton, told AdAge that the company did no traditional advertising for Bubbly. Instead it built a viral marketing campaign by paying for endorsements from two very popular Bollywood stars, Kareena Kapoor and Aamir Khan, who ‘bubbled’ about their new film “Three Idiots” in advance of its premiere.

BubbleTalk built its user base primarily in the Far East. Incmbent carriers offer it as a “virtual phone” service, which enables people to dial a number and leave a message for other people to retrieve from public phones or wireless handsets. As Niraj Sheth wrote in the Wall Street Journal in February, BubbleTalk, the virtual phone service, costs 75 paise, or 1.6 cents to originate a message. Listening to the message more than once carries the same fee. Bubbly enables users to post a voice message for free. Then the carrier charges “at least a minute of airtime per message”. Parent company Bubble Motion takes a cut of the carrier’s incremental revenue.

After India, the company plans to launch Bubbly with carriers in Brazil and Japan. With 100 million users in the Far East, the company has hands-on experience with cultures that put less currency in text messages and the written word. Yet, on a global basis, texting and tweeting, are largely silent endeavors. Nuance, Vlingo, ShoutOut, Yap and even Google are investing in a variety of services that made better with speech input. They are finding that people turn to dictation of tweets, emails and text, as they gain confidence with the technology and don’t mind people over hearing their messages.

Bubbly is different. It is definitely not a dictation or transcription service. It bears a greater resemblance to the “Group Access Bridge” or “GAB” lines that were all the rage as a pay-per-call service in the 1980s. Service providers encouraged people to dial-in to a number that put them into chat mode with like minded folks (often spinning toward adult conversation). GAB lines eventually succumbed to the simple economic fact that the people that used them the most were those that could least afford to pay for the service. Promoting usage was never a problem for these highly social, phone-based services. Billing and collections were the problem that the carriers could not overcome, and it starts with users who DAK (or “Deny All Knowledge”) of making the call.

We don’t want to pour cold water on what is emerging as a very hot phenomenon for the phone-using public. However, we do want the service providing community to be aware of potential pitfalls that have plagued similar services in the past. It may not be hard to get that 500,000 people to listen to messages from movie stars. But they may not lead to the constant stream of calls that make such an offering sustainable. Remember, the leading categories for pay-per-call were ’scopes, jokes and soaps, referring to the daily horoscope, joke of the day and a digest of soap opera plots.

All told, the number of active accounts on Vivox’s network exceeds 11 million (and has been reported as high as 15 million). This pales versus the Skype’s pyramid of 500 million registered accounts (with something like 45-60 million “active” users); however, if anything it demonstrates the ease at which online communicators can toggle over to talking with one another.

Back in the glory days of the first-generation “pay-per-call” services, GAB Lines (for “group access bridges”) were among the biggest money makers for premium service providers – some customers routinely ran up $300 monthly phone bills (which may mean little to wireless customers with multiple family members including data plans, but back then it was real money). These were the true “party lines” where anyone could dial in and chat for hours. Real world experience showed that “GAB calls” led to “DAK calls” – a billing/marketing referring to the propensity for GAB customers to call customer service and “deny all knowledge” (DAK) of making any such call. So it was that one of the most popular (and for the most part non-pornographic) services on the pay-per-call roster, hastened its demise.

Voice Chat on Facebook is destined to have a much more successful future. Although the company provided very little detail in its announcement, other than to call the service a “mashup” for Facebook, we believe it will be offered as a “free” feature enabling Facebook users to initiate voice-based chats with friends or selected groups. Vivox has already demonstrated its ability to scale its network in response to growing demand, and it will be interesting to see what revenue models emerge from offering the service, including the potential for businesses of all sizes to “chat” with their “fans” (meaning customers).

Other voice-based features are sure to follow and, in fact, already exist. These include the ability to update status by speaking over the phone, as well as transcription of stored (voicemail) messages. Opus Research’s forthcoming report on Mobile Speech applications will have assessment and commentary on the growing market opportunity and over two dozen firms – led by Nuance, Microsoft and Google – who are making it easier for both desk-bound and mobile Internet subscribers to use the spoken word to avail themselves of the multiple features and functions of popular sites like Facebook.