Skype Offers Half Pregnant Java Mobile Phone Client
Duncan Riley
26 comments »
Skype is now available on many leading mobile phones, although depending on where you live you can’t use it to call people.
The java based mobile thin Skype client works on around 50 of the most popular Java-enabled mobile phones from Motorola, Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson. The standard feature set includes chat, group chat, presence, receiving calls from Skype users, and through SkypeIn. The half pregnant part: Skype-to-Skype and SkypeOut calls are initially only supported in Brazil (Rio de Janeiro), Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Poland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.
It’s a big step forward for Skype; the company has a partnership with the 3 network and offers Skype enabled phones (and even a Skype phone) in Australia, Austria, Denmark, Hong Kong, Italy, Ireland, Macau, Sweden and the United Kingdom, but Skype on handsets outside of these markets has been the domain of third party go-between services until now. For eBay, getting Skype on more phones means increased use of the service, and hopefully enough profit to keep it from selling Skype at the end of the year.
Skype notes that this release is “expected to last several months, after which a public version of the application will be made available to millions of mobile phone owners around the world,” by which we’d hope is a fully fledged Skype client for everyone.
I’ve been wating for something like this for a long long time.
Except for the “pregnant” stuff, but i think its a matter of time until they finally give the skype skype and skype out options available.
It would be great to have just the data plan on our cells and make all the long and short distance calls trough it.
Hopefully this will all help the company to stay and not get resold by eBay to someone another. EBay is considering to sale its skype division for sometime may be this can force them to reconsider.
Great post. My only gripe is that they didnt wait until it was compatible with RIM Blackberry among other business enterprise user phones.
Yeah, Skype is cool.
Duncan,
What happened to iSkoot that was providing Skype mobile access? Skype used iSkoot’s client on mobile for 3 network. My guess is, even this client is provided by iSkoot. Would love to hear from you if this is an in-house Skype client or iSkoot client
Cheers,
omfut
OK that title sounds very strange….
Interesting news. I already use Skype voice calls on my Nokia phone trough Fring. One problem: the latency on my EDGE connection is quite high.
This is a steaming pile of horse manure. No direct Skype to Skype VOIP call, and it’s Java, not native Symbian.
I think instead of half-pregnant, you mean “half-baked” or so…
This is crap. All this really does is use Skype as a pseudo-address book. I still have to pay (using my phone plan’s minutes AND the SkypeOut rate) to make a call, and I also pay to receive a call (SkypeOut to UK Mobile tariffs are painfully ridiculous).
Piss off, Skype - I want my free calls.
The whole point of the expression of half pregnant is that you can’t be half pregnant.
I would have preferred “half assed” myself.
Finally someone in skype is using that gray matter. It’s probably just going on in select places because Skype is peer-to-peer, and they may likely find themselves in trouble if cell phones (leechers) are not seeding, in piratebayspeak. Of course they won’t be seeding, so unless skype does something about it, “their” network might crumble in the long run. What I’d suggest them is to charge something like 10 bucks a year to use it on a cell phone; or alternatively ask users to “get credits” by keeping skype running on their machines so that “their” network doesn’t fall apart.
Skype on mobile phones is great, only if you have a data flat rate…
Else, limit Skype to presence and IM, or your calls will be expensive. Yes, also when you are in roaming…
This is certainly good news. In today’s world, people our desperate to message using skype and are constantly on the go. The features of skype are much better than yahoo and msn, but takes some time getting used to. Abhishek http://www.dibugs.com
i have used skype on and off for a while; with very mixed results. sounds like this app is extending the mix.
check out my latest skype post here: http://webpoet.wordpress.com/2.....ant-skype/
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