Vonage to Target Enterprise Market with “V-Phone” Mobile VoIP Device

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Vonage to Target Enterprise Market with “V-Phone” Mobile VoIP Device

7:00 am on July 3, 2006 | Category: VoIP, Web Services, Mobile Devices

Broadband prone provider, Vonage, has revealed that its new V-Phone device is being targeted not only to consumers, but also enterprise-level users.

The V-Phone is a 256MB USB drive, which comes loaded with VoIP software, and lets users remotely access their Vonage accounts from any computer in the world. It is now being sold for $49 on the company’s website and will be available through numerous retail channels starting in September. The V-Phone’s launch was the company’s first major announcement since its disastrous IPO in May, and is seemingly an attempt to adopt a more mobile approach to VoIP, while breaking into new markets.

“The V-phone is designed to replace existing phone lines for large and medium businesses,” commented Vonage chairman and co-founder, Jeffery Citron, at a recent press event. “We’ve spent a lot of time and money marketing our service to a particular subset of the market, and now we’ve expanded the capabilities to service a new demographic. Just like any other business, we are always looking for new market segments.”

Vonage has already gained significant ground with small business users, which now account for 10% of its entire user base. Larger corporations, however, have been elusive, preferring to set up their own private IP networks using PBX infrastructure. The new V-Phone is designed for compatibility with such systems, but has the potential to cut per-employee operations costs by up to 65%.

Many VoIP experts, however, are skeptical of the plan, saying that products like the V-Phone aren’t a viable replacement to a desktop IP phone from Cisco, Avaya, or another PBX maker.

“Softphones are complementary. They don’t replace desk phones,” said Infonetics Research analyst, Matthias Machowinski. “There might be some large companies that will use this product, but I think it’s much better suited for the small-business market, where the per-user cost of a PBX is really expensive.”