Skype has announced a partnership with Nokia, the largest handset maker in the world, in which later this year Skype will be integrated into Nokia devices, starting with the Nokia Nseries. The Nokia N97 flagship device will be the first to incorporate the Skype in the 3rd quarter of 2009. Skype eventually will be available on high-end Nokia Nseries devices running the Symbian S60 operating system offering users pre-loaded out-of-the-box Skype calls, instant messages and more, via both 3G and WiFi.
The pre-loaded skype app might drastically improve it’s presence management on the mobile devices where in a user could directly tap into his contact list to see who else is online and chat with them over voice or text instantly. Currently, there are downloadable versions of Skype available for the Android and more than 100 other Java-enabled mobiles from Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, Motorola and LG, as well as Windows Mobile devices. Skype reportedly had over 11 million downloads for it’s Windows Mobile version alone.
Scott Durchslag,The COO of Skype said on the company blog that the partnership with Nokia is a part of it’s larger mobile strategy, where in Skype is being made available for consumers to download on to their existing mobile devices, pre-loading skype on to newer devices and improving the skype experience by developing partnerships with device manufacturers and mobile carriers throught the world.
This move of skype is supposidly to reach large markets around the world where handsets are sold directly to consumers, the consumers who might have never used a PC to connect with the internet.The company is hoping to get most of it’s next 100 million users from these markets.
As opposed to my intuition VOIP startups are positive on this move. Tobias Kemper, Head of Communications at Nimbuzz, says the fact that Skype will come pre-installed on mobile devices is actually going to help normalize the use of VoIP applications (and particularly Skype) and thus boost their own growth. He also added that the integrated approach of Nimbuzz, which combines a variety of voice and text chat services into one app, is still in demand,as quoted on Techcrunch.
Skype the eBay-owned company had 405 million registered users in total at the end of last year.
