Apple Patent Hints At FaceTime Designed For The Enterprise

Apple’s recent announcement of their partnership with IBM is definitely a sign that the Cupertino company has serious plans to get into the enterprise market. However what works for regular consumers might not necessarily work for enterprise customers, FaceTime being an example. While FaceTime’s quality isn’t horrible, it isn’t particularly stellar either.

It’s great for regular folks who just wants to video call, but for enterprise customers, we reckon the pixels and blurred images probably won’t cut it. Well thanks to a recent patent by Apple, it looks like the Cupertino company could be thinking about a more high-definition and enterprise-friendly version of FaceTime.

According to the patent, it describes a system in which people seated around a conference table could all join in on a video call, as opposed to crowding behind a single camera. The patent also describes how Apple plans to allowing higher quality videos to be streamed, which would be lower the quality for non-active participants, thus allowing more bandwidth for the active participant.

This ensures that at least one party will be given higher quality video when it matters. Of course we’re not sure how this will work if everyone is talking and contributing at the same time, but it’s an interesting idea nonetheless. However given that this is just a patent, we have no way of knowing if Apple ever plans on making it a reality, but what do you guys think? Could this be one of the ways Apple plans on imposing their platform for enterprise customers?

Tyler Lee
Categories: Apple
Tags: facetime, Patent