Skype abandons Windows Mobile

Stuart Corner
Friday, 26 February 2010 08:50

Your IT - Mobility

Skype has scrapped its clients for Windows Mobile smartphones - Skype Lite and Skype for Windows Phones saying they failed to deliver "a great Skype experience".

In a posting on Skype's blog, Skype's Peter Parkes said: "Skype Lite only works in a small number of countries. Where it does work, making a call requires you to use up your allocation of minutes from your mobile network, making the Skype-to-Skype calls sort-of-free-per-minute rather than actually-free-per-minute.

"And with the latest version of the Windows Mobile OS, it's been increasingly challenging for us to maintain an app which behaves as you'd expect on a wide range of handsets without working with a mobile operator partner."

However, Parkes said that installed version of these applications would continue to work, adding "Where we can work with mobile operators to make these apps work well – which is what we're doing with Verizon – we'll do just that."

Earlier this month Skype announced a relationship with Verizon Wireless, the largest mobile network operator in the US, under which Skype functionality will be made available on a range of Blackberry and Android Smartphones on the Verizon network.

This came after Skype had missed, by several months, a promised deadline to have a BlackBerry client generally available, and the announcement gave no indication as to when this would appear outside the Verizon network.

Skype did however release a Symbian version in February that runs on a range of Nokia devices. Parkes was enthusiastic about the Symbian version saying: "Finally, where we can make downloadable Skype apps truly great, we'll shout from the rooftops. And if you haven't already tried it yet, you should try Skype for Symbian. It works on over 200 million smartphones." However, iTWire's experience of the software on a Nokia N95 was far from satisfactory.