Action Engine and Acision have teamed to offer a visual voicemail service for Java, BREW and Windows Mobile. Could there finally be some momentum behind visual voicemail?
Apple did not invent visual voicemail, which is one of the iPhone’s many features. The technology has been possible for a while.
SimulScribe, which as been around for several years, offers a visual voicemail product for BlackBerries and recently announced a new beta program for Windows Mobile devices as well.
Its basic service converts voicemail into text messages and then sends them directly to a mobile phone along with your email account.
With this product, you can see who has called you and even what they said in a convenient list. The iPhone only lets you see who called, it doesn’t convert the voicemails to text.
While SimulScribe works with business-class devices, there hasn’t been a solid option for non-smartphone users until now.
Jumping on the visual voicemail bandwagon is Action Engine and Acision. Their new service works on BREW, Java and Windows Mobile phones, encompassing a large swath of handsets in the market.
It supports on-device message access, which lets people play the audio of the message on the phone’s built-in media player; a visual interface that includes the date and time of the call, urgency and caller information as available; full voicemail management, including message archiving and deletion; and one-click return calling.
None of the major carriers announced plans to offer this service from Action Engine and Acision, and they did not make it clear how consumers would take advantage of it.
Empowering everyone with this service, though, should be a natural step in the evolution of mobile services and not be restricted to people willing to pay $600 for an iPhone or other enterprise-supported device.
