Smartphone video call adoption stymied: Juniper

Juniper Research on Tuesday said that Apple's latest generation iPhone will spur adoption of video calls but the trend is stymied because different devices don't talk to one another.

Juniper predicted that while 3-D imagery and more powerful processors will drive the market in the coming five years, the percentage of smartphone users making video calls will remain below 10 percent by the year 2015.

"The use of video calling has had several false dawns and has remained flat in recent years," Juniper senior analyst Anthony Cox said in findings that accompanied a report about opportunities in the smartphone market.

"We forecast that there will be 29 million smartphone video users in 2015, but the market may be held back by a lack of interoperability between different devices."

While the addition of a FaceTime video calling feature to iPhone 4 smartphones provides impetus for video calls the option doesn't promise to become "mass market" technology, according to Britain-based Juniper.

IPhone 4 users can only make video calls to other iPhone 4 handsets or the latest-generation iPod Touch devices.

(c) 2010 AFP