Microsoft is going to take another stab at VoIP, according to company CEO Steve Ballmer.
“We are going to enter the voice-over-IP market (in) the beginning of next year,” Ballmer said at a Microsoft conference in Tokyo.
Microsoft has dabbled in VoIP before, but now the company intends to incorporate VoIP functionality in its operating systems, desktop applications and server software, and be unified with e-mail, video and instant messaging.
Details about how the company is planning to integrate VoIP capabilities, and what exactly that means, were scarce. The company could be doing anything from enabling an Internet-based VoIP service of its own to incorporating hooks for other commercial VoIP services.