WebRTC has slowly but surely been gaining ground across industries and making its way into company product roadmaps. The real-time communications technology is predicted to disrupt the communications industry and grow to be a $4.5-billion opportunity by 2018. In a recent report, “WebRTC and Cloud RTC Platforms: Communications as a Feature,” Peter Crocker, founder and principal analyst at Smith’s Point Analytics, discusses the different drivers and barriers of WebRTC, marketing strategies, business models, applications opportunities and more to give a holistic view of the WebRTC market.
The report identifies cloud RTC (real-time communications) platforms as cloud services that enable mobile and Web developers to integrate communications into their applications with just a few lines of code. WebRTC makes this possible, and many vendors have already started getting involved with implementing WebRTC functionality into existing applications.
One main message to take away from the report is that 2014 is a critical year in the adoption and growth of WebRTC and cloud RTC platforms. Crocker explains the business case for the technology or killer app has yet to clearly emerge, so awareness and outreach is needed to ensure innovative developers find new ways to wrap context around communications.
He also emphasizes how competition will change based on the skills and backgrounds of different players – before, developing applications with communications features was limited to telecommunications companies. This is kind of the tipping point between the old and the new.
“Vendors with background in telecommunications will be better positioned to provide superior quality of service while companies with roots in the web will be better able to interface with developers. Hence, we expect a fair amount of competition between gateway vendors, bringing to market WebRTC gateways exposing IMS features, and web focused RTC platforms players, that bring developer relations and flexible business models,” Crocker wrote.
The report covers a competitive analysis, differentiators for different approaches, different use cases for WebRTC – including automotive, mHealth, customer engagement and social networking – and what to expect to see in the market moving forward. Companies covered include some familiar WebRTC names, including Weemo, Crocodile RCS, TokBox, GENBAND, Tropo, Requestec and Zingaya, as well as some common names, just not to WebRTC yet – 8x8, Genesys, Shoretel and Airbnb.
Edited by
Cassandra Tucker
