Tuesday 3 August 2010

The History and Future of Voicemail

The History of Voicemail
Some of you may think that HulloMail invented voicemail however we can not take that crown!  While doing some research into the history of voicemail prior to taking part in the Future of Voicemail series with Mobile Industry Review last month, we came across some interesting facts about voicemail that we thought we would share.
Many people believe the father of voicemail was Gordon Matthews.  Gordon was born in 1936 in Tulsa, Oklahoma and was an American inventor and businessman and started one of the first companies which pioneered the commercialisation of voicemail, VMX.  However the first recorded inventor of this technology was a Stephan Boies of IBM which is documented five years before VMX was founded. Gordon however was granted the first voicemail patent in 1979 for his voicemail invention and sold the first system to 3M. Subsequent sales of the service were to corporations such as Kodak, American Express and Intel.
The History of HulloMail 
HulloMail, was formed in 2008, however our journey began back in 1999, when our CEO, on a flight back from Dublin, designed a web solution to allow his family to send him emails by simply using their phone. We believed consumers would benefit from having access to their email from any telephone.  We built a platform and signed up our first customer almost from day one.  Since these early days we have deployed our technology globally and have a wealth of experience in voice, video and related services. After years of working successfully alongside telco businesses, we realised that the services being demanded by consumers were not being addressed by operators because of the technology and feature focus inherent in these organisations. In 2006, we began to evolve our business model to address these consumer demands. This evolution has brought us to where we are today, a customer-led innovation business.
The Future of Voicemail
This has been a popular topic of late as consumers are demanding better voice messaging experiences that their new powerful devices can provide.  In order to get a broad perspective, Mobile Industry Review suggested a series of interviews with key stakeholders in the voice messaging eco-system to assess the future of this important feature which is somewhat taken for granted.  View the full series here 
Our CEO provides some great insights into the future of voicemail - check out what he has to say! 
Do you agree with these observations and comments, let us know your thoughts.  
Where do you see voicemail and voice messaging in 1, 5 or even 10 years time?















No comments: