Video Calls on Your Cell Phone

Image via CrunchBase

I keep waiting for iPhone to add video chat to phone calls. Video chat has been available for many years on applications like Windows Yahoo & AOL IM, Skype, and Netmeeting. Beemer also created a device you attached to your landline that enables video chat calls. So the technology is not impossible. So I ask.. Why hasn't it been done on the single most logical platform for video chat.. the mobile phone?!

Techradar.com in their "12 high technologies that failed- and why" article tries their best to provide an answer:

• Mobile video chat
  
  In the UK and US, video chat over a smartphone is still a distant dream. Part of the problem is bandwidth – there just isn't enough of it for two-way video. Part of the issue is ease of use: it should be as quick to place a video call as one where you only use your voice.
  "Vendors didn't realise that the problems were more behavioural than technical and didn't approach the market properly," says tech analysts Enderle. Maybe Apple can turn this one around?

So they say it's a bandwith problem. ok, this I can understand. Also, AT&T is already chinzy with airtime. Lots of apps for the iPhone are denied access to their 3G service, leaving WiFi access limited to availability around each user. But the ease of use issue is BS to me. Users have no problem easily using video chat in other platforms. It's extremely easy to use once set up.

I think if enough people demand video chat on their cell phones providers will break down and provide the service.

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