Talk about strange – while Google Voice can’t get so much as their foot in the App Store’s door, Vonage has just done a pirouette and waltzed right through. According to a recent release from the Jersey-based VOIP giant, their new Vonage mobile application has been approved for inclusion into Apple’s App Store as soon as it comes out of beta.
Details at this point are still lacking: we have no idea when it will actually release, nor do we know how much it’ll cost for all you Vonage-faithful out there. The press release doesn’t even go into what kind of services the app will provide, but we can certainly hazard a few guesses.
Given Vonage’s position in the VOIP industry, it seems likely that we may soon have a Google Voice-esque app that allows users to make and receive calls that tie into an existing Vonage phone number, but right now your guess is as good as ours. For all we know, we could be looking at something as lackluster as an extension of Vonage’s existing Visual Voicemail service, but hopefully the app won’t stop short of what it should be.
Of course, given the ease of Vonage’s app approval, one question in particular is bound to come up. Apple claims that the deciding factor in holding up Google Voice’s approval was that it “[replaced] the iPhone’s core mobile telephone functionality and Apple user interface with its own user interface for telephone calls, text messaging and voicemail”. It’ll be interesting to dig in and see how Vonage adapts to Apple formula, but it looks like it will be a while before we can judge for ourselves.