Google Inc. needs to add more mobile capabilities and support for business customers to its new Internet-calling service to compete with Skype Technologies SA and rival Web-phone providers, analysts said.
Google’s Gmail, the third-largest e-mail site with 186 million users worldwide, added a feature this week that lets users make voice calls to a wireless or land-line phone from a computer, the company said in a blog post. Calls to the U.S. and Canada will be free at least until yearend. Other calls will range from 2 cents a minute and up, depending on the country.
The service lacks features that would help Google make deep inroads in a market dominated by Skype, said Jayanth Angl, an analyst at Info-Tech Research Group in London, Ontario. It’s not yet accessible via Google’s package of business software and users can’t use the calling feature from mobile phones -- an area where Google has made strides with its Android software.
“Given the momentum they’ve had with Android and the growth of that operating system, it’s a pretty clear opportunity and I would expect that’s something we’ll see in the future,” Angl said.
Skype struck deals this year with Verizon Wireless, the biggest U.S. mobile-phone carrier, to install its Web-calling software on phones. With phones like LG Electronics Inc.’s enV Touch, people can make calls without using up wireless minutes.
Other mobile applications including those made by Fringland Ltf. and Truphone Ltd. enable Internet calling over select mobile phones.
‘No Plans’
“We do not offer this feature on mobile browsers, and right now we have no plans to do so,” Randall Sarafa, a spokesman for Mountain View, California-based Google, said yesterday. The company does offer Google Voice, a Web-based phone service that lets people associate themselves with a single phone number for inbound and outbound calls.
Corporate applications, which Google Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt identified last year as a potential billion-dollar business for the company, may be Skype’s focus going forward while Google has concentrated more on consumers, said Will Stofega, a program director at technology researcher IDC in Framingham, Massachussetts.
“Integration with a lot of applications will tip the balance in favor of Google,” Stofega said in an interview.
Skype, based in Luxembourg, plans to double its sales and support staff this year to bring in more business customers. Cisco Systems Inc. and ShoreTel Inc. agreed to help sell Skype’s software to corporations, a person familiar with the arrangement said in July.
Google may eventually give its enterprise apps customers access to Web calling. “We’re working on making this available more broadly,” Nick Foster, a software engineer at Google wrote in a blog post on Aug. 25.
Google dropped $3.64 to $450.98 yesterday on the Nasdaq Stock Market. The shares had declined 27 percent this year before today.
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Source : BusinessWeek