Comments on: Interview with Qik Co-Founder Bhaskar Roy: Competition, iPhone, and Android

By: Scandinavian

Scandinavian — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 13:56:51 +0000

agree with “European”, Bhaskar’s claim that Qik have the least latency is plain rubbish. Anyone who has tried Bambuser (www.bambuser.com) knows there is an Atlantic ocean in difference between the latency of the two services, with Bambuser being far superior.

Qik has done a lot of great things, like a cool web site, very user friendly service and so on. Unfortunately latency is still not good enough in most conditions to give a live feel and allow live interactions.

US mobile networks are stone age technology compared to what is seen in many European and Asian countries. Live streaming is therefore poised to take off in Europe and Asia well before it takes off in the US. This could give companies like Bambuser (Sweden) and even a tiny player like Molv (Maldives) an edge over Qik.

By: Amazing

Amazing — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 17:07:11 +0000

Qik is amazing and have the best service. Period. I am amazed how fast they have got live streaming going from so many devices – while others struggle to make this work even with the high end Nokia phones.

By: Qiker

Qiker — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 04:41:24 +0000

Qik should go back to its last round of investors and say ’sorry————–we did misrepresent our service; and we are willing to renegotiate the valuation to say a $5M post and can you provide an additional million or 2′. Otherwise—Qik is dead–they will not raise addt capital without investor revolt especially with all the other big claimants in the niche.

By: KITCHEN EXP

KITCHEN EXP — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 02:58:54 +0000

a phone is used by me three years ,sonyerission….ha..

By: debra

debra — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:40:07 +0000

I love Qik. And it’s simplicity and interface is much easier to navigate as compared to kyte or flixwagon. Though there are latencies in the videos, it’s user experience is just really easy for me to navigate.

Not sure about ustream. We’ll just wait and see.

By: web design and developers ireland

web design and developers ireland — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 15:24:27 +0000

web video still needs a lot of work, the limited screen size on a mobile is a major drawback of it ever really becoming more than a toy no matter the software or platform

By: Santa

Santa — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 12:15:48 +0000

Is this a joke? How can Qik still claim that they have least latency? Isn’t that Ustream-video pretty obvious… even Kyte has lower latency and try to do the Ustream-thing with Bambuser and Qik. Qik has a nice interface though, and good platform support.

By: Luis

Luis — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 05:23:53 +0000

@peter have tried every solution out there as well and am sticking to Qik as well – both for their great product and the people. They are the only ones who can do 640×480 live video over WiFi. However, will not suggest using the 640×480 mode on 3G – has ways to go there.

Also, had the pleasure of meeting them in their office – and they have a great team that is not just very talented but go out of their way to help and listen you out. They are the company to watch – as they go out of their way to make sure that you not only have a great experience with their product but also with them as people.

By: Peter

Peter — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 02:21:45 +0000

@ariburton well said. Qik really rocks on live and is really really simple to use. I have tried every mobile video service there is and have settled to using qik on a regular basis.

By: symbianbcaster

symbianbcaster — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 22:53:09 +0000

I can do all of it with flixwagon on my nokia 6120 and I get real good quality! I am also using it to upload my video’s to Nokia Ovi automatically. I can’t find a good reason to move to QIK after reading this post….but I’ll sure be waiting for more features ! let the best one win.

By: digitaljohann

digitaljohann — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 20:36:57 +0000

Who said you can’t record and upload using Qik. I use it all the time from my Nokia N95. Just disconnect from the network – record and then when you want connect and the video will be streamed out. Pretty darn simple!

By: Ari Burton

Ari Burton — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 19:33:44 +0000

QIK does one thing, and it does it better than anyone else. Stream live video from the camera in your cell phone directly to the internet… did I say L*I*V*E*? QIK is simple, Qik is easy, Qik is FREE. The people behind QIK go out of their way and move mountains to makes sure every QIK user has a smooth experience.

Don’t confuse or compare Qik to other “similar” services… they do streaming… and… and… and.. and it gets too complicated.

If you want one button live video streaming from your phone, QIK rocks.

As a matter of fact, I will be at the CES show in Las Vegas streaming live with my Nokia N95 exclusively via QIK. Make sure you subscribe to http://www.TheBurtonReport.com ad free / sponsor free tech blog to see the action.

By: Jason M

Jason M — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 19:27:46 +0000

Have been using Qik since the very beginning and I think it is the best and most innovative service ever.

Keep up the great work!

By: Barry

Barry — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 17:22:30 +0000

At least you got to give Techcrunch the credit for keep trying to put QIK in front of their competitors.. Too bad the days where not real technology and a lot of back wind would take you somewhere.

As said above it is a cool app but nothing more and with the market meltdown, if they don’t get a business model working there will be no good ending to this story.

But again.. great PR work Michael

By: Mike

Mike — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 16:50:55 +0000

Most of the so-called patents are already in use and were actually there at flixwagon to begin with. E.g. – supporting a dead battary scenario was introduced by flixwagon at the begining of 2008, while qik added the support only a few month back. Latency is not always the best with qik (just saw a clip comparing them to ustream’s client and they are far behind…) and it mainly depends on where you are located…
I am writing this comment since I see these “marketing” inaccuracies in almost all of Roy’s statements – i do think Qik is a nice product, but why not be honest?

By: Newbie

Newbie — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 16:09:43 +0000

In the interest of full disclosure, how much ownership do you have in Qik?

By: European

European — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 14:19:04 +0000

I still can´t realize why they would say that they deliver least latency and best quality.
-”We still have the least latency + best quality (can do 640×480 SD quality over WiFi or 3.5g)” when there is services like bambuser who do it so much better, there is an enormous difference in latency. I mean the magic of live is the ability to interact with the person that is live, but with qik it is like making a phone call to Australia 20 years ago
- hello…
(20sec later)
- hello

Due to the fact that their service cannot stay live or real-time, make it loose the magic of live video it disables the interactivity. Ustreams mobile video looked promising, but still slow. Qik just feels like a version of a new way to upload video, not to stream live video, and there I find Shozu as a much better service to upload videos to the web.

We need to see latencys down to 1 or 2 seconds otherwise the psycology of man cant interact, or we have to redefine the term live since I do not experience qik to be live. Maybe I am wrong?

By: Markus Göbel's Tech News Comments

Markus Göbel's Tech News Comments — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 10:17:40 +0000

Qik works great on Wifi. That was my normal use case when I started one year ago. But now, I have to admit, the excitement is lost a little bit. It’s hard work to be an always on cameraman for others. And also: Who has the time to see all this unedited footage?

By: limo hire london

limo hire london — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 05:29:36 +0000

its good to see an indian making news on techcrunch :)

By: dungiis

dungiis — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 04:07:51 +0000

Anyway can’t wait for android :(

By: El Jose Designo

El Jose Designo — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 02:08:37 +0000

if QIK manages to swindle further funding of as much as another $1 from anyone, then their real product is snake oil. The video quality is H.O.R.R.I.B.L.E.
And it’s not going to get better, in a long, long time. It’s not QIK’s fault… it’s mobile data is a terrible data layer … mobile voice is hardly usable in many areas.
This is what happens when non-techies gloss over the hard realities of technologies and get funding to build products which cannot meet spec no matter how much the tweaking.

By: Mr. Grumps

Mr. Grumps — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 00:49:49 +0000

Sorry, mobile live video quality SUCKS all around.

I can’t watch anything on qik longer than 2 seconds before my head hurts…

Hope Ustream atleast improves the quality

By: Media17

Media17 — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 00:45:32 +0000

@Scoble Agree, ultimately the destinations like Ustream/Facebook will win if they enter mobile (which Ustream is apparently)

I bet the carriers build this technology themselves at some point and pre-installing on the phone, making Qik useless.

By: Joe manns

Joe manns — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 00:42:36 +0000

Qik is a neat technology, but too far ahead of its time. I have it on my iPhone and on 3G the video just isn’t really watchable.

I do applaud Qik, Ustream, etc for pushing the tech limits. The US carrier network just sucks…

Congrats Qik, Congrats Ustream.

By: Chacha

Chacha — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 00:40:57 +0000

Very Nice. Hopefully we will see some more great things coming!