Nimbuzz, the Rotterdam, Netherlands-based mobile VoIP start-up, says that different variants of its mobile app have crossed 150 million downloads. The service has over 30 million users.
This data from Nimbuzz, and the spectacular growth of Skype, are signposts of how mobile Internet telephony is becoming pervasive. Even relative upstarts are finding growth, mostly as folks look to find ways to talk on the cheap, or preferably for free. According to Juniper Research, there will be 100 million mobile VoIP users by 2012 and 471 billion mobile VoIP minutes by 2015.
As the number of users on the network increases, we’ll see an exponential growth in the network usage, in this case, the total amount of time spent talking. The company says the total number of minutes on its network is growing 50 percent month over month, with big growth coming from the Middle East, the U.S., India and Brazil. Nimbuzz users have talked for 3.65 billion mobile voice minutes since the app downloads began in May 2008.
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