ACN - Iris 3000 Video Phone Finally, someone got it right
Are you old enough to remember when video phones were the “wave of the future”. For decades video phones popped up everywhere from Sci-Fi movies to cartoons. Some of you may remember George Jetson talking to Jane via his ultra futuristic video phone. Remarkably, the first video phone was actually invented in 1955 and was known as the “Photo Phone” however it was extremely slow as you can imagine and very expensive thus was never rolled out. And even before the “Photo Phone” AT&T back in 1927 demonstrated a one way picture phone.
In 1970 AT&T rolled out the “Picture Phone” which was the first video phone offered to consumers however it was again very expensive and with very few customers it fizzled out around 1974. They took another stab in the early 90’s but as was the case with their previous two attempts the cost kept consumers away.
A myriad of other companies including Panasonic have made attempts at tackling the consumer video phone market to no avail.
Commercially, Intel was the industry leader with their Intel ProShare Conferencing Video System 500 launched in 1995. Two years later they only had 50,000 users and today theyno longer support the product.
Finally, someone MAY have gotten it right! Read the rest of this entry »
