Dan’s post is about the issue of having enough users to be a viable communications option to become a viable communications option. Skype and WhatsApp, with hundreds of millions of users, have met that challenge. Wire, on the other hand, has to address that challenge. In my case I use Skype for reasons that will become more apparent in a few weeks – stay tuned – but mostly because I can access contacts on many platforms and have built up a significant contact base.

This week I used WhatsApp with a contact attending MWC but he is my only WhatsApp contact (and he is also on Skype but had his reasons for using WhatsApp there). My real issue with WhatsApp is that it’s restricted to one smartphone – as it relies on a phone number as the primary contact resource (Skype, for instance, relies on an email address: I have it running across five or more devices at any one time.) I can have a WhatsApp account running on one BlackBerry 10 device but not a second one nor on my iPhone. Same limitation applies to BBM – with over 100MM users – which is tagged to the PIN assigned to a device – whether on iOS, Android or BB10. At least now I can use WhatsApp on my PC, provided I have a browser open.

And once I have a contact on any of these I then “dial by name”.

Bottom line: in today’s world we have many options for communications and will continue to do so; it’s a matter of who in an individual’s social and business networks is on what. One hundred years ago there were two telephone companies in Bruce county in rural Ontario – with a population in the thousands only – and many farmers had two phones. Today there is one independent company – with one of the best fiber installations in Canada – even to the farm. What goes around comes around.

Why are people so focused on directory ?

Never seen anyone use name as the way to find someone.

Of the people you know you already have an existing unique identifier to get in contact with you: email, telephone number. Especially email, doesn’t require a directory. Because you can just send someone a link to create the first contact.

Or maybe I’m just part of a far to technical community ? That understands that unique identifiers are better than names.

If a link by email really is enough, than the size of the user-base really is less important too.

Jim,
In Israel and many other countries, Whatsapp doesn’t have a directory challenge at all – everyone is on it. Whatsapp today is large enough.

My point relates to your comments about using PC’s to access WhatsApp. But across the chat/text messaging space it’s simply easier to type long messages using a PC keyboard than trying to use a touch keyboard on a small format device. (And i should have included Skype in that list.) Now if i actually had some contacts on WhatsApp I might use it. But then check out Dan York’s comments on the directory challenge: http://www.disruptivetelephony.com/2014/12/the-directory-problem-the-challenge-for-wire-talko-and-every-other-skype-killer-ott-app.html

Thanks Jim. Israel is ruled by Whatsapp, so no point for me to use Wire or anything else – something like 90% of the population (and 100% of the people I interact with in Israel) use it.

ARM in a data center is a matter of horizontal scaling. I don’t really care about the ARM/Intel competition here – just stating the fact that a mobile chipset is still behind its laptop or desktop counterpart by a few generations. It “covers” that by having DSPs and GPU capabilities, but these aren’t helping any for some types of use cases.

Server manufacturers and Microsoft for Windows on ARM hardware is asking mobile device manufacturers to include ACPI on their devices.

So the hardware is converging.

Thus the operating system manufacturers keep trying. The latest attempt seems to be getting closer:
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2015/02/new-video-shows-off-ubuntu-convergence-demoed-on-tablet-phone