Weemo Brings Its WebRTC-Powered Video Chat Solution To iOS, Android And PhoneGap Apps

Weemo, a service that offers a WebRTC-based real-time video chat platform for software vendors, service providers and developers, launched its new mobile SDK today that brings the company’s services to third-party vendors who want to use its WebRTC capabilities in iOS, Android and PhoneGap apps.

Weemo’s technology was previously only available to select partners, but it’s now open to all third-party software vendors who want to work with the company.

WebRTC is in an interesting spot right now. It’s one of the most interesting new browser technologies we’ve seen in a while, but while it’s at the cusp of becoming a mainstream technology, the lack of native support by Microsoft and other vendors is keeping it stuck in place right now. The lack of a complete mobile solution, Weemo’s founder and CEO Thomas Cottereau believes, remains a major roadblock for wider adoption of this technology (besides the fact that IE and Safari don’t support it either).

The company, which launched in 2007, has quite a bit of experience in dealing with video conferencing and it’s bringing this to its WebRTC platform as well. The company recently opened its eighth data center and now has a presence in San Jose, New York, London, Paris, Mumbai, Singapore and Hong Kong.

By using its software virtualized video conferencing bridge, for example, Weemo can support multi-party chats, even though the WebRTC specs don’t officially support this feature. The company charges its partners a flat per-user fee but it doesn’t charge for usage.

As Cottereau told me, it’s important to remember that WebRTC isn’t a complete solution for video chat in the browser. It gives developers a wide range of choices, but even just establishing a peer-to-peer call can be challenging because of firewalls and proxies. To make video calls, you also need at least a basic cloud infrastructure to handle the media relay.

In some regards, Weemo is similar to the WebRTC services Telefonica’s OpenTok platform currently offers developers. TokBox, too, offers SDKs for iOS and Android, as well as support for multi-party video chats, traffic shaping and other advanced features that aren’t part of the original WebRTC spec.