By Mae Kowalke, TMCnet Contributor

Just about everyone has an app these days for iPhone (News - Alert) and Android smartphones. The “app-iffication” of software, and moving services to the cloud, has meant that every service and every computing function is now ready for the smartphone and tablet market.

Phone.com (News - Alert) naturally offers such apps for its service.

The cloud-based VoIP provider offers unlimited calling, automated call forwarding, free conferencing, voicemail and more than 60 advanced features in a turnkey, cloud-based package that is particularly well suited for small and midsized businesses that otherwise might not have the resources for a full-fledged business-grade PBX (News - Alert) system.

And of course Phone.com has apps for iOs, Android and Blackberry. They call it the Phone.com Mobile Office.

What sometimes gets overlooked is that not every phone is ready to run an app on one of the common smartphone operating systems. There are many cases when an alternative mobile solution is needed, and many solution providers miss this key consideration. But, not Phone.com.

Knowing that an essential service such as telephony requires ubiquitous access, phone.com offers a browser-based mobile solution that effectively allows older phones and those left out of the app world to also use their phone.com mobile telephony solution on the go.

“Our mobile web app looks very much like our mobile phone apps but it is browser-based,” wrote Phone.com on its blog. “It has the ability to access your Phone.com address book, review phone logs, check voicemail and send/receive text messages as well as most importantly make phone calls. You can also use it to call into your conference call bridge.”

Smartphone users can find the browser-based app at m.phone.com, and they will need to log in with their Phone.com login credentials. There are several cases when a browser-based app becomes useful.

Smartphone users running a less common operating system is one very good reason to use the browser-based app. All they need is a web browser on their phone, not an app store and the latest phone.

Similarly, older smartphones also benefit from a browser-based approach. Many older Android (News - Alert) smartphones cannot run the latest apps, or suffer from a memory shortage that makes running apps prohibitive. In such cases, a browser-based approach makes sense.

Further making the browser-based version of the phone.com app useful for older phones is the relatively light graphical footprint of the app. It is low on both data and processor usage.

The browser-based app also is useful for international traveling.

"It’s great when traveling outside the US because it uses a call back system and very often in foreign countries incoming calls are free, if you have a local sim,” added the blog post.

Want to learn more about SIP Trunking and how to integrate it into your current UC strategy? Don’t miss the SIP Trunking- UC Seminars in South San Francisco on November 27, 2012.