Zipit Wireless is promoting a text-messaging plan for its small Zipit Wireless Messenger 2 device for free instant messaging with AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Messenger and Windows Live Messenger.
Zipit users who sign up for a text-messaging plan will now be able to contact cell-phone users, as well as communicate by instant message.
The plan will cost $4.99 for up to 3,000 messages per month when it formally launches in February. Between Dec. 20 and the launch, text messaging is free on the device. The Z2 allows teens to have multiple, concurrent conversations with their friends for free at any of the 9,000 participating Wi-Fi enabled McDonald’s restaurants in the U.S., or at any open or free wireless “hotspot.”
The Zipit 2 device costs $149.99. It has a color screen and launched in November as a follow-up to the monochrome original Zipit, which came out in 2004. Zipit 2’s text-messaging feature — which can be added through a downloaded software update — will help close the gap with cell phones. The original Zipit is not upgradeable.
Unlike a cell phone, the Zipit won’t accept text messages from numbers that haven’t been added to an approved list by the user, which should make it immune to spam sent as text messages. Also unlike a cell phone, it won’t be able to send text messages to more than one recipient at a time.
Like Sony’s Mylo, neither device has really taken off. The Mylo has also been criticized for not including the instant messaging services of Windows Live Messenger and AOL Instant Messenger as configuration options. Both the Zipit and the Mylo need Wi-Fi to connect.
On December 6, 2007, Google upgraded its Gmail integrated chat to include AOL Instant Messenger chat capability. This allows Gmail users to sign into the AIM chat service and communicate with any AIM user while still being signed on to the Google Talk service.
Instant Messaging (IM), with real-time communication and easy collaboration, is the number one text-based communication choice for teens, followed by text messaging (SMS) often used to send short messages to and from mobile phones.
Cell-phone carriers typically charge 10 or 15 cents per text message, or $15 a month to add 1,500 or “unlimited” text messages to a calling plan. The service costs almost nothing to provide, making it “one of the most profitable applications known to man,” according to Morgan Stanley’s telecommunications analyst, Simon Flannery.
