By Richard Martin

While native VoIP clients have become common on most of the worlds leading smartphone platforms, BlackBerry has lagged behind. Now Indian voice startup TringMe has introduced what it calls the worlds first BlackBerry VoIP application that enables calls over WiFi networks, rather than the cellular network.

If no Wi-Fi network is available, the application defaults to local access numbers and callback options using the cellular network to place calls. While its a fairly stripped-down VoIP app, the TringMe program does offer streamlined conference calls: The user selects the contacts and hits call, and the TringMe system rings back a few seconds later. 

A thin-client version of Skype for BlackBerry was launched last year, but that application uses the cellular network, rather than Skypes system. Other mobile platforms, including Android, the iPhone OS, and Symbian, all boast VoIP applications from multiple providers including Truphone and Nimbuzz. In this, as in other aspects of the smartphone boom, BlackBerry has lagged behind.

“RIM does not provide enough platform support for making live VoIP calls,” Yusuf Motiwala, TringMe’s founder and chief executive, told ZDNet UK.

BlackBerry presents certain hurdles for VoIP application developers, including a lack of a SIP API. TringMe is specifically targeting the enterprise market, which could be fertile ground for a native VoIP client for BlackBerry.

Research in Motion has discouraged the creation of a mobile VoIP client for BlackBerry partly to avoid alienating its carrier partners. Juniper Research has forecast that 100 million people will use some form of mobile VoIP by 2012, and that carriers will see some $5 billion in losses from mobile VoIP over Wi-Fi networks in the next five years.