Skype is coming to Windows Phone - really Skype has again promised to slip its eponymous telephony application into Windows Phone handsets real soon - while integrating with Facebook and working out what people might actually pay for. The pledge emerged from last week's consumerism carnival (CES 2012) after a sycophantic interviewer buttered up Skype's VP of Products …
Skype has been on Android for a while now, but apart from playing around with it for an hour or so I don't run it anymore - mainly as it drained the battery too much when I last tried it.
Since a lot of people (in the UK at least) get all those free minutes and don't have too many international friends to call, I can't see Skype being a major competitor to the telcos yet. Unless maybe they start selling smartphones like telcos do - i.e. subsidised and with Skype handling the telephony stuff instead of the carrier. But even then they'll have to fix the battery usage.
Windows Phone's lack of sales is not just about lack of sales. The big part of the "joke" is that MS basically pushed away the sizable group of Windows Mobile users they already had in an effort to make their OS more iPhone style.
A common comment about WP7 was along the lines of, "If I have to ditch all my Windows Mobile software, I may aswell go to Android."
Now, pardon my ignorance but I kind of assumed that this was already available on the windows phone.
Considering how a Skype client even runs smoothly on a psp and how Microsoft have bought the entire company last year I think its actually a bit surprising to learn that it isn't already available. It seems Android supports it, so why not WP7 right after launch date?
I used to use Skype even for paid for calls, but one day all the credit went from my account. Despite me only using the iphone client for the last couple of years, Skype said it was my fault I lost the money and that I must have let some malware steal the details from my PC. They weren't interested in the 2 firewalls that sit between me logging onto their site or the AV protection I had installed or the strong password I'd used. It was less than £10 but customer service was less important then making money on my stolen credit...
<tin hat>
It wouldn't be a massive surprise if Microsoft did this, and instantly gave WP7 an awesome unique selling point. Anyone who wants to call internationally would then be mad not to seriously consider WP7.
The question is, is Skype enough of an emminent presence in the VOIP arena to get away with it?
</tin hat>
Nice to see WP7 continuing it's progress as a serious OS option. Haters aren't obliged to use it, so why hate at all?
But you could only communicate with the small number of other WP7 users. The same argument could (and is) be used for iOS FaceTime, and there are many more iPhone users.
IMO it would be really dumb of MS to pull Skype from other platforms. Being largely platform neutral is it's major adjvantage.
I want Skype in the living room for those family -> family weekend calls.
But I don't want another box on the TV (usually with significant restrictions), or under it. So this looks like a good edition? Maybe a tie-in with xbox live, for discounted skype -> normal line rates?
Wonder if Microsoft have plans to outlaw all other VOIP on WP7. I can believe some in MS planning would see it as a way to drive Skype installs on other platforms, the foundation of some imagined future monopoly. Wouldn't be hard to kill all non-Skype gateways into the system to force Skype installs.
Personally I'm happy with Androids provider agnostic VOIP support and picking my own service provider, who currently undercut Google on pricing.
I don't think I've seem many people using it on their phone.
More likely its a dry run for selling windows voip phone hardware to business. I reckon we'll see a Windows ARM desk phone with skype and/or communicator, hooking into exchange/internet/pstn.
As always, competing OS implementations will slowly have their features reduced. That probably doesn't matter too much as google voice rolls out.
Large corporates that already have huge internet pipes between disparate sites can hive off all their intra-company phone calls through Skype, All their phone business through the mobile. Tie that into the corporate PC with additional services and you add a Winphone to the Windows/Office franchise. Now there is a lock-in Microsoft can exploit, err sorry, I mean a USP that Microsoft can sell.
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