Skype to be bundled on Nokia phones

 

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 17 Feb 2009 at 10:40

Internet telephony service Skype is to come pre-bundled on Nokia mobile phones, as a result of a new partnership between the two companies.

The service, which made it's name as a PC VoIP application, is increasingly being integrated into mobile phone handsets.

The Skype software will first appear on the Nokia N97 this summer, before being rolled out across the rest of the N-series.

Skype will be embedded into the Nokia address book, allow users to see when their contacts are free to take a call or available for instant messaging.

Skype says that Nokia customers will be able to place VoIP calls using Wi-Fi or 3G data connections. The latter might put the pair on a collision course with mobile networks, some of which ban VoIP calls from mobile handsets under their terms of service, in a bid to protect their own call revenues.

The partnership comes just weeks after Skype owner Ebay suggested it was willing to sell the service, just three-and-a-half years after it paid $2.6 billion for it.