18 December 2007

Lisa Pierce, vice president at Forrester
Research, said she thinks that Ribbit has a challenging path before it
with its SmartSwitch technology that promises to revolutionize VoIP.
"But if Ribbit is successful," she said, "it very likely will be
acquired by one of the major players -- companies Ribbit's brochure
treats with some disdain."

When Silicon Valley telephony startup Ribbit announced the availability on Monday of its SmartSwitch,
an open platform for embedding telephone capabilities in any
Flash-enabled browser, it took square aim at one of the leading
technological trends of the past decade: smartphones.

While smartphones are becoming more computer-like every day, Ribbit
is coming from the opposite direction. In a press statement, the
company said that it has the potential of converting any of the world's
750 million computers into "the next generation of phones," with
developers deciding how they work.