Qik Touts Video Chat Explosion on Sprint's EVO

Mobile video maven Qik Inc. says users of the High Tech Computer Corp. (HTC) (Taiwan: 2498) EVO 4G handset are now engaging in more than 25,000 video chats each day on Sprint Corp. (NYSE: S) after teething troubles with the service were fixed.

Qik says an average video chat session on the EVO phone lasts around four minutes.

The company initially had to withdraw its application for the Android phone after the volume of users overwhelmed its server on the June 6 launch of the EVO handset. (See Gadget Watch: How Many EVOs Did Sprint Sell Really? and Video Chat: Meet the New Data Hog.)

Qik has worked a number of updates on its software since then, and is now up to release version 3.54 of the application.

In its blog Qik says it has concentrated on improving two-way video performance across different network connections. The EVO can run across Sprint's 3G network, piggyback on Clearwire LLC (Nasdaq: CLWR)'s WiMax network in certain markets, and over local WiFi connections. "This implies working across all network conditions... which vary significantly," the company writes.

Qik also reports that it has recently improved performance when on lower bandwidth connections, and improved the time it takes to first initiate a video chat session.

The HTC phone is a useful testbed for the company in the US, since it's one of the first major smartphones with heavily promoted video chat capabilities across multiple mobile networks. Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) has so far restricted the Face Time video chat application on the iPhone 4 to WiFi connections.

— Dan Jones, Site Editor, Light Reading Mobile