Asking Four Simple Questions Can Ensure App Developers Deliver a Complete User Experience
HOUSTON, October 28, 2014 – Bit6 (www.bit6.com), a communications as-a-service platform provider that helps to transform the app experience by allowing developers to easily add communication features to any mobile or Web application, today issued a challenge to the technology community implementing Web Real Time Communication (WebRTC). To leap beyond WebRTC’s significant limitations and fully leverage its underlying value to accelerate innovation, application developers need to consider the entire communications ecosystem.
WebRTC, among the hottest technology trends, solves an important and complicated set of problems, making it possible to collect, convert and send streamable audio and video data between browsers. According to the Disruptive Analysis’ 2014 Edition WebRTC Report, WebRTC will be available on more than 6 billion devices with more than 2 billion potential users by 2019.
Calling WebRTC merely a “building block,” Bit6 CEO Alexey Goloshubin says WebRTC’s point-to-point capabilities are disconnected from the wants and needs of users. Bit6 is advocating coupling WebRTC with other aspects of communications, such as text and multimedia messaging. Application developers should ask the following questions to maximize usability when implementing communication features:
• Can users connect via smartphones and tablets?
• Are we satisfying the strong preference for messaging over voice and/or video?
• Are users who only have access to legacy systems, such as feature phones and landlines included?
• Is the user experience unified and seamless?
“By bringing WebRTC to mobile and coupling it with other aspects of communications, such as text and multimedia messaging, application developers can create new communications capabilities and deliver a unified experience that satisfies how people actually communicate,” said Goloshubin.
People expect to be able to stay connected via voice, video and messaging, wherever and whenever, across multiple platforms and devices, including smartphones and tablets. Messaging must be a priority, said Goloshubin, citing a report from Experian that found U.S. smartphone owners ages 18 to 24 send 2,022 texts per month on average – 67 texts on a daily basis – and receive another 1,831.
“Our experience with communication apps has proven that even with access to the most advanced communications software, a full communications ecosystem must still account for users who remain on legacy systems – such as feature phones and even landlines,” said Goloshubin.
With Bit6, it is easy for app developers to dramatically enhance the user experience by quickly adding features that enable user-to-user communications. Bit6 combines the entire communications ecosystem – including WebRTC, mobile and public switched telephone network (PSTN) – through its cloud-based communications-as-a-service platform. Bit6 helps developers create new ways to deliver seamless voice, video and text/multimedia messaging integrated across Web and mobile applications.
The Bit6 beta program recently introduced a software development kit (SDK) for Android, offering WebRTC-based voice and video calling and multi-media messaging. The Android SDK joins the SDK for iOS and a JavaScript SDK for Web platforms announced earlier this year. With Bit6, it is easy for app developers to quickly add features that enable user-to-user communications across smartphones, feature phones, tablets, and web browsers.
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