Bria Mobile = Bria + Services Platform
For over seven years, CounterPath’s Bria 3 mobile VoIP clients have earned award after award, and happy customer after happy customer. Through eight generations of iPhones and seven generations of Android, Bria 3 has been there for our customers. But it’s time for a new version to support the next generations of mobile devices and OS. It’s time for a version to support the networks of tomorrow. It’s time for Bria Mobile!
Bria Mobile was developed from customer feedback. Our customers asked for more than a softphone, they wanted a better user experience on their mobile devices. Battery consumption was a significant driver for Bria Mobile. Also, other softphones failed miserably with trying to solve the power consumption issue using faulty Push services. As recently discussed by CounterPath’s Jim O’Brien, Push is something that you need to carefully consider when implementing VoIP on mobile. CounterPath spent considerable time developing a Push service that worked well with devices, call servers and hosted voice services—the latter two can’t be claimed by our competition.
So with Bria Mobile, CounterPath is making an exciting and significant change by enabling a services platform that is married to our mobile softphones. It’s more than just a softphone—it’s all about the softphone experience. To have the best experience you need to have a service overlay to the existing call platforms. This is what Bria Mobile is all about. Bria Mobile = Bria softphone + services.
Let’s outline the several reasons for the change:
- It gives us the ability to offer a service rich platform—With CounterPath’s subscription services, customers will receive service offerings that are included at no additional charge. An example of this is CounterPath’s new Bria Push Service. CounterPath has built up world-wide infrastructure to support our customers globally with Push. Bria Push Service eliminates battery consumption on mobile devices when the Bria app is running in the background, which addresses the leading complaint from mobile VoIP users. This free service to Bria subscribers will help keep users connected while virtually eliminating battery usage when Bria is in the background.
- It allows us to have more frequent updates—With a subscription model, additional resources will be applied to produce more, timely releases for end users to give them the best content in a quick manner.
- It gives us a supportive business model to support our customers—The perpetual license models available from iTunes and Google Play do not allow for a way to effectively cover the on-going costs to support new devices and OS updates. This does not enable a way for a company to cover its ongoing development costs, and is certainly not conducive to maintaining a sustainable business model.
- We're able to provide a simpler and more flexible offering for our customers—In a Perpetual offering, adding new features that have a cost after the sale requires us to either create an In-App option to purchase, or create a new version and make users buy it over again. By offering Bria for just 99 cents a month, we can add new features without needing to charge extra. Never worry about paying for a new version of Bria. By offering our services by subscription, customers can choose a package to suit their needs, and upgrade or downgrade as their needs change.
- Alignment with Software Industry Practices and Customer Expectations—In the past five years, the majority of software vendors (such as Microsoft and Adobe) have adopted a subscription licensing model, with widespread user adoption. This recognizes the value of ongoing software updates and paves the way for software developers to bundle their software with value-added services.
CounterPath is excited to bring the new Bria Mobile and associated services to market, providing our users with a better experience. Starting in August, Bria Mobile will be available from iTunes and Google Play.
If you have purchased a copy of Bria 3, it will continue to operate on the phones and operating system you have now. Although we are moving to Bria Mobile as the product for new users, devices and OS, Bria 3 will still be supported on iOS 10 and earlier, and Android N and earlier.
If you have any questions or comments, please let us know by emailing: customersuccess@counterpath.com
Thanks,
Team CounterPath
