Regular readers know I have written about Peerio and Popular Telephony in the past. This is an update to company’s strategy of commoditizing the PBX market. The company has signed a deal with Commoca to make IP phones that are based on Texas Instruments’ Titan chip platform. Commoca, will make a touch screen IP phone that will be sold to large enterprises and small businesses. In addition Popular Telephony has signed a deal with three companies in China, that will make low-cost Peerio-powered phones. Grand Element Digital Ltd. (GRANDi), will make handsets, while EJoin, will make gateways needed to make the Peerio system work. EWoolPhone is going to offer the service to its 1000-odd enterprise clients in Vietnam and South China.

“Asian manufactures will help us drive the commoditization of PBXes,” says Dmitry Goroshevsky, the Popular Telephony CEO. He says it is a deliberate strategy to keep ahead of Microsoft which is working hard to muscle its way into the enterprise IP business via its communications server. Goroshevsky says the company is going to help drive down the handset price to $50 a handset. The PBX market is a $2 billion dollar a year market, and two companies – Cisco Systems and Avaya – dominate the business. Popular Telephony is one of the handful of peer-to-peer companies taking on the PBX business. Other players include Nimcat Networks. (Get a reality check from Aswath on this whole P2P serverless VoIP thing.)

From the Archives:
* Move Over Vonage, Here Comes Peerio
* Peerio, a Skype Challenger
* Serverless VoIP ain’t all that
* Fighting for the Phone
* Microsoft Cometh
* The PBX Wars