At its annual CEO Summit in Carlsbad, California Intel announced a $15 million investment on Jajah Inc., Web-based VoIP phone-calling company, in an effort to enter the VoIP market and supplant Skype as the provider of choice.
Jajah, with more than 2 million users of its free or low-cost global calling service, is on its third financing round and has received funding from Sequoia Capital and Globespan Capital before. With Intel by their side, the major focus of the deal is the long term plan of embedding the Internet phone-calling technology of Jajah into microprocessors so that users can make calls even when their computers are off or asleep - a drawback of using PC-dependant VoIP services like Skype in my opinion.
The deal gives Jajah access to Intel's sales channel of thousands of dealers, personal computer makers and software developers, and could lead to Jajah becoming a desktop icon on PCs later this year, Healy said, although no plans are set.
Over time, Jajah hopes to see its Internet phone-calling technology being embedded into microprocessors, or so-called central processor units (CPUs) – Intel's main business.
Jajah plans to use the funding develop new products for global markets, and aims to sign up 5 million customers by year-end.