Skype wants more third party applications

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 13 June 2006 02:58

IT Industry - Strategy

Skype has celebrated the first anniversary of its Skype Developers Program saying it intends to expand the program and boost the number of developers and applications.
Skype's application program interface (API) - available on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux - is free for anyone to use and develop both commercial and non-commercial applications. In the past year, the program has supported the creation of more than 300 software applications and over 100 Skype Certified hardware products by some 3500 developers, according to Skype.

Skype says that in the coming year it will focus on growing the program further by providing additional support to the developer community, particularly in North America, and to enable deeper integration.

Skype is particularly interested in: new APIs, covering the areas of SMS, voice access, call transfer, plug-in, COM4Web and Skypecasts; access to Skype's 100 million member community with third-party application search, trial and purchase functionality within Skype software; and closer integration with Skype software via a user interface plug-in framework.

In addition to the Skype API, which includes a managed code wrapper for COM and ActiveX controls to "enable developers to quickly and easily build Skype enabled applications," Skype offers:
- a developer zone web site for access to tools, sample code, technical documentation, release notes, technical support etc
-member forums, which enable online discussions with other members of the Skype developer community.
- a certification program for third party applications.