For that to happen, the company must wait for the arrival of mobile devices with enough processing power and available network bandwidth, said FirstHand VP of marketing and business development Peter Brockmann.

I’m very encouraged by the aggressive plan that Intel has for improvement in the availability of high-performance, low-powered, small-footprint chips for mobile devices, Brockmann said, after a recent meeting with the chipmaker.

FirstHand, which founded in 2003, sells SIP-based multimedia server products for audio and videoconference, presence and instant messaging. It also sells a desktop console that it licenses to other companies.

The company was called SIPquest until late in May. We changed our name because, fundamentally, SIP has won the war, Brockmann said.

After all, every major VoIP player has committed to SIP, or Session Initiation Protocol, with the notable exception of Skype Technologies SA.

Ottawa, Canada-based FirstHand, which employs 43 workers, recently secured $7m in its third round of venture capital financing for expansion. Next year is our plan to be profitable, Brockmann said.

The company hopes to be scooped up by one of the major vendors, at some future point.

Our hope is that a major equipment vendor will recognize that value [of FirstHand’s enterprise mobility applications] that they would want to own, he said.

3Com, Avaya, Cisco or Nortel would be potential buyers of FirstHand, but Brockmann said the technology is likely not yet mature enough for this to yet even be a possibility.

But FirstHand is chasing sales deals with these vendors.

We’re talking with many of those major players about them embedding our technology into their solution set, Brockmann said.

3Com, Cisco and Nortel already are customers. FirstHand also is in discussions with Avaya about a potential partnership, Brockmann said.

3Com uses some FirstHand technology, in its VCX product line for audio and video conference and presence, as well as in its Convergence Center Client, which includes FirstHand’s desktop console product.

Nortel uses the FirstHand Mobile Assistant to push Nortel’s IP PBX features onto users’ smartphones. A couple of months ago, Nortel began reselling FirstHand’s clients as part of its hosted product line to its customers including France Telecom and Deutsche Telecom.

FirstHand recently announced its Enterprise Mobility Gateway, a Linux server application that pushes desktop IP phone features to mobiles for other vendors. Our goal is to push enterprise features to mobile devices, he said.

While its convergence multimedia portfolio currently drives most of FirstHand’s revenue, Brockmann reckons its mobile revenues this year will be dominant.

Since last September, the company has also made its software available for dual-mode phones, which have WiFi and GSM or CDMA connection capability. Its Mobile Console for dual-modes currently is supported on several devices.

But when it comes to dual-mode applications, as with its mobile videoconferencing, Brockmann said FirstHand again is waiting for the market to catch up.

For that to happen with dual-mode phones, the devices will need better battery life, Brockmann said. Also, the WiFi protocol wasn’t built specifically for audio, which creates fundamental technical issues for users, he said. With WiFi, for example, packets are not prioritized for voice or data. But the forthcoming IEEE 902.11e standard for WiFi quality of service is expected to be approved in the next quarter or so, he noted.

FirstHand Mobile Console for dual-mode phones has session control or network awareness, which means it chooses the best-available network signal for a given call.

Users can set the phone to do this automatically or manually. Currently, FirstHand is working to give them a third option: Find the network connection that is the cheapest, Brockmann said.

FirstHand sells only to OEMs and has about a dozen channel customers.

We did not invest significantly in a large sales organization or marketing … Our goal is to resell or OEM our software to and through the major IP PBX, hosted service players, service providers, he said. Our goal is not that our brand be at the front of our user experience … but that of our channel partners’.

The company, which competes with OnRelay, Orative and Traverse Networks, claims it uniquely supports both dual-mode and WiFi devices.

It also differentiates by being solely focused on enterprise applications, Brockmann said. That’s where the devices are the premium devices, he said.