A lot of fuss this week was made of the availability of Skype on Nokia smartphones, but of course it was the first implementation, done when 3 Group wanted to introduce Skype to stimulate its data services.
The actual news is that Nokia is endorsing it by making it available on its Ovi platform, effectively its app store. Nokia will have wanted to be sure that its operator customers were alright with the inclusion, given that it might undermine some operator revenue.
However the best use of Skype on a smartphone is to handle international calls and roaming and slowly but surely, in Europe at least, what was once a massively expensive item, is coming down in price, thanks to the intervention of the European Commission. If the operators are making less money on roaming and international calls, then they are losing less when people use Skype and Nokia must have reasoned that the time is finally right to go ahead and load it onto Ovi.
Nokia points out that over 200 million smartphone users globally can now avail themselves of Skype from Ovi, but that doesn’t mean that anything like that number will be downloading it.
Skype for Symbian will allow Nokia smartphone users to use Skype over WiFi or on mobile broadband and that is supposed to include GPRS, and EDGE not just 3G and HSDPA. We’re not sure that would make much sense or given any kind of call quality.
The Skype client will allow free calls (as long as you have an existing cellular data package) to other Skype clients, save money on calls abroad, use Skype instant messaging on your phone, and have presence information about Skype buddies. You have to have the latest version of Symbian for it to work.
Skype says that it will soon introduce this client to Symbian mobile devices from other manufacturers, including Sony Ericsson. Initial devices which can use the software include the N97, X6, 5800 XpressMusic and Nokia 5530 as well as the Blackberry alike E72.