SCOTTSDALE, Ariz., Dec. 7, 2004 (PRIMEZONE) -- Awareness of VoIP is rapidly growing on the Internet, according to VoIPAction.
VoIPAction conducted an analysis of 10 keywords that are in the mainstream of public awareness and that were searched for by people at the Yahoo-owned Overture search engine.
'Voice over IP' as a search term beat out the keywords 'Nintendo', 'Mac' and 'Bluetooth' in popularity of the number of search requests made for the month of October 2004, and was close in performance to some other household words: 'Oprah', 'Pokemon' and 'iPod'.
The results, which can be confirmed by visiting http://inventory.overture.com/ were:
Harry Potter: 705,005 requests Pokemon: 369,885 requests Oprah: 365,336 requests iPod: 327,507 requests Voice Over IP: 311,210 requests Nintendo: 156,683 requests Mac: 97,374 requests Bluetooth: 62,753 requests Skype: 54,526 requests Vonage: 47,253 requests
Chris Lewis, Founder of VoIPAction said: "This is one simple barometer of the awareness of VoIP on the Internet today. We believe that current industry estimates for VoIP adoption in 2004 are well below the actual adoption rates in the marketplace; in the third quarter of 2004 sales of VoIP gear jumped 69% to $452 million (Source: Infonetics Research), the number of VoIP lines shipped to businesses grew to more than 2.1 million (Source: Dell'Oro Group) which was a 14 percent increase quarter-over-quarter versus traditional lines that gained only four percent for the same period.
"Skype has just confirmed 2 million users in North America, Vonage now has over 300,000 subscribers, FreeWorldDialup has at least 300,000, and Voiceglo of Ft Lauderdale announced that almost 2.75 million people were now using it's service worldwide of which 40% (1 million) were domestic, and these figures exclude over 400 other Service Providers already active in North America. We expect to see significant additional penetration of VoIP in 2005 as the cable companies and telco's gear up their VoIP offerings, and the mass market becomes more educated on the price and feature advantages of this breakthrough technology."
About VoIPAction (http://www.voipaction.com)
VoIPAction provides simple descriptive information for consumers and small businesses to help them learn more about VoIP, how it can save them money on long distance and international phone calls, and the many Advanced Calling Features that are now available by switching to VoIP.
The web site provides information tools that help VoIP Companies connect with each other and with the media including; the VoIP North America Directory of Service Providers, Carriers and VoIP News Sites; a free VoIP Industry Kit for journalists and news writers who are interested in developing articles on the industry; and a free 17 page VoIP Learning Guide.