What do the following have in common: Skype, Viber, Whatsapp, Line2, Tango and Kakao? Yes, there are all OTT apps for your mobile phone that enable you to communicate with your peers. Skype, Viber, Line2, Tango and Kakao actually enable you to call one another. Each one dominates a section of the world, where Kakao and Line2 are dominant in the far east, Viber dominates Japan and Eastern Europe and Skype kind’a says: “Look at me bit**es, I’m all of you combined”.

What do the following have in common: VoipDiscount, Nymgo, WiCall, VoIPstunt, Vox Mobile, Cloud Roam, Skuku? All of these are VoIP Mobile OTT apps, similar to the above and yet – no one truly heard about these or is using them. Each one of the above is more or less a replica of the previous one, maybe with one or more added features – but all in general are the same pitch and bit**, make cheap calls over VoIP via our service.

So, what does it all mean? it means one simple thing, no one truly cracked the formula to make money on the Mobile VoIP OTT business – everybody is still looking for the killer business model/VoIP OTT Application. What is the right way? providing low cost calls? providing business oriented services? providing simple roaming solutions? maybe bundling roaming data plans and SIM cards? or maybe, all of these are sooooooo passe that the world just says: “Stop fu**ing about and create some truly new, change how think and how we work completely. Paying 1 or 2 dollars more per month, I’m not gonna change my service for that – it’s pointless.”

So, what are the true killer apps that will truly say: “this is a game changer, from this point onward, VoIP OTT will no longer be the same!” – Here is a list that I believe will make the difference:

1. Make calls completely social – Phone numbers are so 18th century, they are pointless

2. Make your phone aware – Presence and availability is key

3. Drop the stupid things – call recording, visual voicemail, funny sounds, funky tones – stop the bullshit, give me proper services than stupid features

4. Make your service reliable – stop behaving like a website operator and thing like Ebay, every minute your service is down or affected by bad service you are loosing money

5. Make work, then make pretty – application design is important, product design is important, but not more than the product itself

6. Invest in support and monitoring – relying on your suppliers to do it for you is stupid and childish

7. Only blame yourself! – when something fu**s up, it means that you did your job wrong and you cut corners. Don’t start blaming your colleagues or your contractors, they are only doing what you asked them to do

And most importantly, remember the following statement: “I’ve seen the furthest, because I sat on the shoulders of giants.” – don’t tell the world how you’re going to obliterate Whatsapp and Skype, look at them, strive to be them, and then do it better.

I wish all of you good luck.