Published on 02/16/06 at 22:02:25 EST by Jack Deth
Anyone that knows me has heard me talking about this "concept phone" I wanted to see made and it is the exact product that NetGear is now trying to market.
For those of you not familiar with Skype, Its an online application allowing you to speak freely to other skype users. It has superior audio capabilities compared to similar services and for a small fee you can get your own telephone number so you can be called directly to your PC from landlines using SkypeIn, and you can call out to anywhere in the world at a low price using the SkypeOut service.
Now having used this service and knowing some people who use the skypein/out services, I saw a great opportunity for the first company that could bring out a simple portable phone running a simple slype client with wifi capabilities. As long as the phone isnt a total rip-off this is a possibly huge market where there will be millions of dollars to be made. So I figured a small portable phone with a long-range wifi antennae running some light linux version along with a light linux skype client might be a possible solution... Another thought was picking up an old used PocketPC based wifi equipped machine capable of running the skype for pocket pc client might be another solution...
The Pocket PC solution is too costly, unless you are already grabbing yourself a new cell phone in which case you can get one running pocketpc and built in wifi, while the first idea is a great concept for a cheap simple phone.
I have looked and looked and found nothing but overpriced rip-off's and glorified cordless phones that still require a PC.
Finally while checking out NetGears site looking for a manual on a router I noticed something...
There it was...
Now if you looks closely... you see a great looking device that really shouldnt cost more than $200 US. What I see is a test campaign to see if its even worth their time making this device.
This could revolutionise the inexpensive cellular phone market and crush it if this device was under $100.
Only real problem I have with Skype is that I cannot get a phone number here in Canada for use with its services. A SkypeIn number is inexpensive, going 12 months for 30 Euro's which includes free answering machine, which is great even if you just want to use this as an inexpensive VoiceMail system.
Here is a larger image of the phone... I think this could be something... I dont know what the features of the phone are yet seeing as its currently vaporware, but when it does come out... if it doesnt have at least lithium-ion batteries, there isnt anything worth talking about...
I hope this phone is everything that they are claiming it will be, yet not as expensive as they would like to charge for it. Getting the pricing right on this product is going to be one of the most important things I can see for this to be a success. Too much and it will end up a dead product, too little and they will run out too fast for me to get one
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