Truphone today announced that AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) has been integrated into its iPhone and iPod touch apps. The inclusion of AIM means Truphone customers can now keep in touch with over 800 million addressable accounts for free.
This is the fifth messaging service launched on Truphone, the others being Google Talk, Skype, Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger. Where Wi-Fi isn’t available, Truphone Anywhere lets subscribers use text and voice with Skype and Google Talk for the cost of a local call.
From the release:
“Our goal is for mobile phone users to be able to reach any contact in their address book or on their buddy list, in a low cost way, at any time, using just one application,” said Geraldine Wilson, Truphone CEO. “Today’s announcement means that iPhone and iPod touch users gain a great way to stay in touch with AOL Instant Messenger users. We will continue to integrate further services and functionality, on other platforms too, giving people everything they need to stay in touch all within the Truphone application.”
What we think?
The steady march of progress continues. With Neustar‘s announcement that it can provide IM communications between profiles on different IM clients, I wonder how long it will be until Truphone integrates that service. After a certain amount of time it ceases to matter which service you use – if everyone can talk to everyone else for free, then the service providers really just become different skins for one huge IM community.
