So he passed on Skype. He found it too expensive at three billion dollars. But Rupert Murdoch still wants VoIP, and that too within weeks. Could it be Vonage? At a Goldman Sachs Investor Conference, the wily old fox of media said that he expects his online sales to be between $500 to a billion dollars in next five years. Currently, the company gets about $100 million from online-related revenues. Given that he has spent over $1.1 billion and is looking to spend more on “search and VoIP”, I wonder if all this cash outlay is just a way to appease the Wall Street and heat up the lukewarm News Corp stock. Scott Rafer has some thoughts on Murdoch’s game plan – different from mine of course.
If he buys Vonage, that chips away at my thesis a bit. Does anyone under 30 use Vonage?
I don’t think Vonage falls into the Voip category that News Corp is targeting. I would expect News Corp to be interested in buying an AOL on the high end or a Gizmo Project or TelTel on the low end. These would attract online activity leading to ad revenue. Vonage is a phone service that has limited online appeal.
They might consider Net2Phone or Earthlink in the middle range.
New Corp might consider a Net2Phone or Earthlink in the middle range.
FWD would be a fine choice for News Corp for a good many reasons, not the least of which are it’s SIP infrastructure and the service’s remarkable list of partnering agreements.
how about counterpath(eyebeam)someone will pick this one soon or later.
Xten has more corporate customers than end-users. It’s business is based on selling it’s software platform. The former cofounder of Xten left the company and went to Eyeball. The recent CEO left after only 2 months. If someone buys them, it would only be for a few million. It smells like a dead cat, Morris.
I don’t think Vonage would want to sell to Fox. A better suited partner would be someone like SK-Earthlink or T-Mobile. Cellular, Wifi and Voip from one company could make for a revolutionary offering.
Rick
that was excellent move by Mark Bruk to kick recent president out,the guy was use car salesman,at the same time he hired Jason Fischl(much bigger then Erick in voip industry)who through sipfoundry founded TELTEL,you don’t see the bright side and just bash former xten,don’t know why?
Rick —take a look to these links
http://vonage.com/features.php?feature=softphone
http://yakworldcity.com/device_home.php
http://messenger.yahoo.com/